


Devil in Me

by dawittiest



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Ableism, Angst, Bullying, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Child Abuse, Dark, Food Issues, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Misogyny, Religion, Self-Harm, Substance Abuse, Swearing, Unreliable Narrator, Victim Blaming, Violence, f-word (not fuck. the other one)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-11 02:43:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13515024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawittiest/pseuds/dawittiest
Summary: Matt and the devil, through the years.





	Devil in Me

**Author's Note:**

> _Huge_ thanks to DancingPlague/tetrameter for all the help with this story!
> 
> It started as a ficlet about Matt’s thoughts on the devil and grew into this monster. All of this is pre-series. Yeah.
> 
> Please mind the warnings. I tried to list everything I could think of, but it’s generally a dark story about people, mostly children, going through awful things. To reiterate: there is a GRAPHIC RAPE DESCIPTION OF A MINOR. Take care and stop reading if it gets too much.
> 
> Yes, this is canon-compliant. I just filled the cracks with more misery.

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.

I was not a lovable child, and I’d grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs.

—Gillian Flynn, _Dark Places_

 

 

 

_Five little devils, all dressed in red,_

_Tried to get to Heaven on the end of a thread._

_Thread string got broken, down they all fell._

_Instead of going to Heaven, they went to…_

 

Of all days, Matt doesn’t like Sunday the most, because on Sundays there’s Church.

Dad says go stand by the altar with other children. Matt tucks himself in the arch of Dad’s pant leg. Noon is children’s mass, and Matt doesn’t like it most of all. Priest asks questions about the reading and they’re trick questions. He doesn’t listen to their answers and explains it to them like they’re little children who only just started going to Church. Matt doesn’t like questions that have one answer. Why ask them, if he already knows what the answer is going to be? It’s rude to talk back, so Matt doesn’t speak at all.

Matt misses when he was little and could sit on the altar stairs. The noon mass is crowded, and they’re running late the way they always run late, and there are no seats left. Now that Matt is big he has to stand. He leans back on Dad, warm column that’s soft and hard too, that stretches up, up, up, until Matt cranes his head and there’s Dad’s face. Dad puts hands on his shoulders. Matt rocks into the embrace, slackens and is held up. His feet start hurting. Matt shifts to the other foot. Dad says he’s young and if his old man can stand through the mass, Matt can too. Matt is not a baby and he _can_ stand through it; but his feet hurt. Matt hates standing. He wants to bounce his leg, whirl his arms like a windmill, but he’s not allowed. The voices carry, rise overhead in a solemn cloud, young, old, all sucked into the droning chorus that’s multitude of voices and a singular voice. Heavy and dense, stuffing his ears and his nose and his mouth, like the smoke from the candles. The wax red and the flame red, reaching like hands to the ceiling. Matt squints and the flames stretch upwards, he shakes his head and they shake with him. The voices encompass him, mist-gray and cold like ancient things are cold, and the flames surround him, twinkling bright and warm. Like a lullaby, or a thick blanket. Matt sways, sleepy and achy, slides down the column of Dad’s legs.

“Upright, Matty,” Dad whispers.

Matt straightens his back. Beat, two, it drags out – he slouches. He watches the people in the nave, but it’s all the same and they blend into one person with many heads and many tongues. He can’t see their feet at all. There’s a free seat further back, in between a pillar and a grandma—but it’s rude to squeeze there now. Matt blows out a breath, deflating. Two little girls are sitting on the side-altar’s steps. Little but not _that_ little – they’re sisters, the older one smaller than Matt but not much, curly-haired and in matching ruffled dresses like two sister dolls. Giggling and whispering, quieting every time their mom shoots them a look and puts her finger to her lips, and growing boisterous in a moment. Matt pouts. They’re little but they’re behaving like babies. He turns his nose at them, glances to see if they notice. They don’t. Matt wants to be little like them, so he could sit on the stairs too. When he was a baby, Dad says he did cartwheels at the altar. They had to carry him outside and tan his bottom. Matt warms up with the audacity of it. He unfocuses his eyes and a ghost-Matt appears and does a perfect cartwheel, inch above the altar – he can do it like that sometimes, unfocus his eyes and conjure a ghost-image and he can play it like a movie in front of him, as many times as he wants. He thinks that it is very simple and clean. He thinks, if someone right now told him to do a cartwheel, he would, and it would be perfect. First goes a hand, then a leg, up, then the other leg, and then the legs swing down, and fall on the other hand. He wishes he had a little brother to whisper with. Matt likes Church best when he can sit, and he can imagine he’s a recluse living on a deserted island and every day when he wakes up he has to pick his own fruit and peel it with a sharpened bone, or that it is hundreds years ago and he has a big library that smells like leather and dust, and he can take out lambskin-bound books whenever he wants and stroke their fragile old pages, and it’s almost as nice as when laying in the evening in bed. He picks up his newest favorite story, where he’s a captain of a wrecked ship, and he’s drifting on a piece of wood and it’s cold, but the sea is green and pretty, and he has to do something soon but now it’s peaceful and he doesn’t want to move yet, but Matt’s feet hurt and his eyes stick together and he can’t make the story last.

“Be back,” he whispers to Dad.

Walking is better. Matt walks slowly and the altar is impossibly close before his eyes and then it’s far and miniscule, like looking at it from the back end of the telescope, and then it’s right in front of his face again. Sometimes it is like that, when it’s solemn and sleepy, and everything is both captivating and out of focus. Matt stops at the altar and it’s just an altar again. Matt clasps his hands in front of him, because he wants to swing them but he can’t. He glances at Priest, who is bald and draped in gold; only his hands peek from beneath his robe, and his tiny penguin feet. There are altar boys kneeling on the side where Matt stands and one of them has white trainers under his alb. Matt blinks. It’s not right, to wear the alb and trainers, something false about it, and it makes Matt angry. He turns his face.

He looks at the wall, and at Jesus standing with his arms bound behind his back, and at the man sitting on a throne that’s not a throne and looking at Jesus. Pilate. Weird name, but not why Matt remembers it. He looks at his strong profile – _Roman nose_ , Dad said – looks at his hands. Hands that he washes – there’s a crude little basin next to him cut in wood. Washes his hands off all this. Matt imagines him rubbing his hands, water running pink and yellow from the blood and the puss and the sweat and the tears, though the sweat and the tears don’t have a color. Matt put his hands under the tap and rubbed soap into them, and imagined washing off his day, Dad singing a song to pull him awake, the liver and onions he had for dinner and hid in his cheeks like a hamster and smuggled it into the bathroom where he flushed it down in the toilet. But he only saw the soap suds and the water looked just like water, which is no color at all.

Matt moves on; Jesus is given the cross. They lash him, then—he falls for the first time. This all he knows and it is tiresome, so Matt only glances at it, to confirm it is still on its place. The next one is good—Jesus meets his mother, Mary. Mary is pretty and has long hair and a halo and Matt likes to imagine it’s how his mom looks in Heaven. He stays longer at this one. Just a glimpse of the good Simon, helping Jesus carry the cross – Matt likes Simon, he thinks this is very strange and very bad that all the people gawked at Jesus carrying the cross so long and only Simon offered to help him – and goes quickly to his favorite one.

The lady wipes Jesus’s face – this is very good. He knows the lady’s name but he forgot and she holds the cloth with Jesus’s face imprinted on it like a painting. Painting made with sweat and puss and blood. The pain soaked into the fabric forever for all to see – these are my tribulations, these are my tears! But also the pain wiped away. The cloth taking in, absorbing some of the pain for itself. There’ll be new pain, new sweat to stain Pilate’s bathwater, but it won’t be this pain. The lady was very kind and very good and Matt loves her.

The last one is the second fall. For the rest of it, Matt has to cross the whole church to get to the opposite wall, and there’s always a thrill in that because the space stretches like a gulf and Dad is getting impatient. The later part is a rush, one bleeding into the other, weeping women, final fall, crucifixion, gulped down and never tasted, but it has its own allure, like staying up under the covers with a flashlight reading after Dad turned out the light.

Dad is calling him silently with his eyes. Matt drifts to him, unmoored boat pulled toward a lone beacon on a familiar shore. Then there are bells and there is kneeling, and Matt’s knees hurt a lot. The stone is cold and unrelenting, and his jeans leave crisscross in his skin. Matt rocks, bursting at the seams. Then people penguin-hobble in a line for Priest to place the Lord Jesus’s flesh on their proffered tongues, and Matt doesn’t go because he is too small and Dad doesn’t go either. Matt doesn’t know why they have to stay when they don’t go, but Dad gives him a look and Matt bites his tongue. He holds his breath and counts, and says to himself – when I reach thirty, then we can go. And when he reaches thirty and they can’t go yet, he holds his breath and counts again.

“Go in peace,” Priest says and Matt grabs Dad’s hand, pulls him through the door before the people spill out in a bleary-eyed mass.

The sun assaults his eyes, sharp bright and pinching, and the Church-spell lifts from his head and evaporates into the ether. Matt grins, lips pulled tight over teeth, and skips, right foot pink brick, left foot pink brick, don’t touch the cracks and the gray bricks.

“Can we get ice cream?” he asks. There’s a store on the corner and Matt likes the lemon popsicles there best. Dad ruffles his hair. Matt scrunches and hops out of the reach.

“No ice cream before dinner, you know the rules. Your grandma would have both of our heads.” Matt makes a face.

“Do we have to go,” he whines. He’s being a brat. He doesn’t care. Dad gets that weird pinched look on his face he gets sometimes.

“Matty. We talked about this. If your grandma doesn’t see you, she’ll be very sad.”

Matt tucks his chin to his chest and drags his feet.

“No, she won’t,” he mutters.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Matt says quickly.

The sky is bright and blue. Matt stomps on a gray brick; he doesn’t feel like bouncing anymore.

Grandma’s house is drab and mean, and it looks down on him reprovingly like a ruffled cement hen. Matt sticks his tongue at it. The moment they step inside the sun goes out, the spring and the light and the air not belonging within the walls of the house. It’s dim here, like in church, but it smells different. Worse. Cigarettes and the sickly reek of greasy chicken mixed with dirty dish soap water.

Nurse opens the door. Nurse is very little – little like a child, and she says Matt is going to outgrow her any day – and she is old. Almost as old as Dad. When no one looks, Nurse gives him red tinfoil-wrapped chocolate candy that melt in his hands and leave them caramel-stained and sticky, and taste of coffee and adulthood. Nurse is nice and Matt likes her, the way you like someone pleasant and then forget about them when they’re not there.

“She’s in the living room,” Nurse says, like this is something that can change, like when they come one day, Nurse will say, “she’s in the kitchen”, or “she’s in the garden”, and they’ll go to the kitchen or out to the garden and see that she is there and not in the living room. Nurse says it in half-whisper and Dad thanks her in kind, like he’s afraid to disturb something sleeping, and they go after her on soft feet. Matt wants to stamp to see how the air would mold around such an audacious sound, but his foot rises and falls, soft like a pancake.

The tee-vee is on; the tee-vee is never off. He sees that the tee-vee is on before he sees the tee-vee; flashes of images, brazen and dizzying, play out in the glass cabinet he can see before he rounds the corner. Commercials. Then they round the corner and there’s the tee-vee, playing commercials. In front of the tee-vee: ugly brown blanket, on top of it veiny splinter-thin arms that shoot up like birch branches and connect to Grandma’s pointy-chinned face that’s always pulled downwards with wrinkles and a tart grimace.

“Good mornin’, ma,” Dad says.

Grandma’s pale bird eyes turn from the tee-vee.

“Mornin’,” Grandma grumbles. Grandma doesn’t speak. She grumbles, or she barks, sometimes. Grandma looks at Matt and then she barks, “Well? What are you standing around for there, child? Come and give proper greeting to your grandma.”

Matt pouts only a little and obediently marches up. He presses a quick peck on Grandma’s dry, coarse cheek and jumps back. The hateful blanket scratches him. Matt digs his nails into it.

“Good—morning, Grandma.”

Grandma’s bird eyes squint into narrow, predatory slits.

“He looks sickly. Is he eating right?”

“I’m eating,” Matt mutters.

“He’s eating, ma,” Dad says.

Grandma makes a _hmpf_ sound.

“The boy needs to eat. He’s always been scrawny, more than boys his age ought to be. You need to feed him right, so he grows into a proper stature for a man.”

“Yes, ma,” Dad says on a small exhale.

“You coming from Church, young man?” Grandma asks him.

Matt shifts. He wants to go back to the safety of Dad’s column legs, but then he’d have to cross the whole room and go in front of the tee-vee, and the distance stretches on and expands in his head. He nods.

“Was it a nice sermon?” Is sermon supposed to be nice? Matt shrugs to be safe. “What did the priest talk about?”

Priest talked. Matt remembers mouth-hole moving and sound coming out. He forgot about the words.

Matt looks at Dad. Dad looks at him. Matt looks back at Grandma.

Grandma is looking at him like a bird going to peck.

“Were you not paying attention?” Matt looks at the hateful blanket and doesn’t look at Grandma’s bird eyes. “What were you doing if not listening – goofing around in the house of God?” The blanket is ugly and brown; Matt wants to rip it up. “You need to watch him better, Jack.”

“He’s just a kid,” Dad says very softly.

“That’s hardly an excuse. The child’s Catholic just like you and me. If you give him slack, he’ll never learn how to behave in Church.”

“Yes, ma.”

 _Hmpf_. “The boy needs to eat. Put some meat on those skinny bones. Nurse!” Grandma gestures regally and Nurse appears. “We’re ready for dinner.”

“Right away, Mrs. Miller,” Nurse says and goes to the kitchen.

“Sit at the table, sit.” Matt sits at the table, nothing on his left and Dad on his right. Matt kicks the table leg. “Where’s Father? Father!” Grandma screeches. Grandma screeches sometimes, but only at Grandpa. Grandpa emerges from a room, slippers shuffling on the carpet. “Where in God’s name have you holed up again? Dinner’s ready.”

“Mornin’, dad,” Dad says.

“Hi, Grandpa,” Matt says. Matt gives him a little wave.

Grandpa nods and sits at the table. He sits at the head of the table and they sit like this – Grandpa, table corner, Dad, Matt, table corner, and no one.

Grandpa unrolls a whooshing crisp newspaper. He puts the newspaper by his plate.

Nurse comes out of the kitchen with a steaming bowl of soup. It is tomato soup. With rice, even though Matt likes with noodles better.

Matt straightens up in his chair, anticipating. He stops kicking the table leg.

“Won’t ma eat with us?” Dad asks and Matt mouths the words along.

“I don’t feel I have the strength to keep the food down, Jack,” Grandma answers and Matt mouths the words along. Then: “Nurse, isn’t it time for my pills?”

“Not yet, Mrs. Miller,” Nurse says.

“Hm. I feel it should be the time.” Matt loosens. This is how it always is. This is what is known and good. “Stop slouching,” Grandma barks. “You’ll grow a hunchback. And don’t slurp, for the love of God, were you raised with the pigs?”

“Yes,” Matt mutters.

“Puh! Is that any way to you talk to your grandmother?”

“Sorry, Grandma,” Matt says morosely. Matt says it very low and very slow, to make ostensible he says it _morosely_.

“Hear that! So much spite for such a small body. He certainly doesn’t get it from this side of the family,” Grandma grumbles and her mouth is a hard seamline. “His father’s son, through and through.” Matt doesn’t know why Grandma says it like it’s something ugly. Dad is the best. “Not even the Miller blood could wash it away, no. That’s what I said to my Gracie, God rest her soul. But that girl, she had a mind of her own. Didn’t I tell her, Father?” Grandpa grunts. “I said to her, I said: be careful of the Murdock boys. They got the devil in ‘em.”

“Ma, please.” Dad puts down his spoon.

“Oh, you’re good people, Jack, following your mother’s example. A fine woman, very humble, old-school manners. But your father, well—he is better left unmentioned. And that brother of yours, he takes too much after him. He still in prison? I always say, judge not, that you be not judged, that’s what I live by, but _that boy_ … broke your poor mother’s heart and, I regret to say, drove her into an early grave—”

“That’s enough, ma.” Dad’s voice is taut like a string that’s very rare, the way it gets only when he tells Matt to be good, because Mommy is looking down and smiling at him from Heaven.

“What, what?” Grandma scoffs.

“Not now. Not in front of Matty.” Matt looks at Dad and then looks at Grandma.

“The boy’s old enough. He’s gotta know what’s what.” Grandma looks at Matt and she looks taut like Dad but not like Dad. “Your uncle was a no-good rascal and didn’t listen to his elders and now he’s in a very bad place where naughty boys go. You don’t wanna be a naughty boy.”

Matt looks at her.

“What does it mean I got the devil in me?”

“The devil is sin. You have it in you, from the moment you were born, you are sinful.”

“How can a baby be sinful?” Matt wonders.

“It is human, so it is sinful. Good Christians are baptized to wash away sin.” Matt imagines Priest bathing him but a baby in a baptismal font, water murky with dirt and sin. He feels sorry for other babies that are not Christian and stay sinful and dirty. It feels unfair; they’re just babies. “But the devil always lurks. You have to pray very hard for the strength to resist temptation, and humble yourself before the Lord and atone for your moments of weakness.”

“Do you have the devil in you too, Grandma?”

Grandma grimaces.

“Don’t sass me, my boy. That’s the devil coming out of you.”

“It’s just an innocent question, ma,” Dad murmurs.

“There’s no such thing as an innocent question. Children must listen, not talk back. What are you looking at me like that for, boy? That haughty look in your eyes – there’s the devil in them, looking back at me. Pride is the worst sin, especially in a child. You behave like that and you’ll grow horns. I can see the tips peeking already.”

Matt touches his head. No horns. People don’t grow horns.

Grandma laughs, like sucking tube and sandpaper, and breaks into coughs. Matt pulls a wince and hides it behind a spoon.

“Nurse, is it time for my pills? I feel it’s time.”

“Not yet, Mrs. Miller,” Nurse says.

“Hm, hm. I don’t feel so well. You shouldn’t upset me. You know my health’s not what it used to.”

“Sorry, Grandma,” Matt mumbles.

“What are you muttering there under your nose?” Grandma barks. “It is very rude to mumble.”

“Sorry, Grandma,” Matt says, loud.

 _Hmpf_. Cough.

Then they’re done with the soup and Nurse collects their bowls and takes them to the kitchen, and then Nurse brings the main dish. Pork cutlet and potatoes and carrots and peas. Matt eats the potatoes. The carrots and peas are mushy and gross. The pork cutlet is dry and terrible. Matt likes chicken better. He cuts the cutlet into tiny pieces and hides pieces of it in the carrots and peas, and spreads some of the carrots and peas all over his plate. When Dad doesn’t look, he puts some of the cutlet in his napkin and puts the napkin in his pocket. Then they’re done with the main dish and Nurse collets their plates and takes them to the kitchen. Then they stand up and Grandpa goes to his room and Dad and Matt go to sit with Grandma in front of the tee-vee.

“The boy can watch the tee-vee.”

“Yeah, watch some cartoons, Matty.”

Matt sits cross-legged on the carpet in front of the tee-vee. On the tee-vee, there’s Batman. The Penguin steals a helicopter and Batman goes blind and then Batman makes a seeing device but then the seeing device gets broken and Batman has to fight the Penguin blind, and then he makes a steam cloud so the Penguin is blind too, and Batman defeats the Penguin and then his sight returns. Matt’s already seen this episode. It’s ok.

“How is ma?” Dad says in a half-tone. It’s his “Adults are talking” voice. He talks about Matt in this voice, like Matt can’t hear. Matt strains his ears intently.

“As well as can be, when you’re my age.” Grandma, croaky and too loud. “You don’t bring the boy around often enough. There’s only so many times I have left to see my grandchild.”

“I’m sorry, ma. I’ve been, I’ve been busy, you know, with practice, and…”

“Have the boy stay with me, then.”

“Ma…”

“He’s alone in that apartment all day, he can go see his grandma from time to time.”

“I don’t… I don’t want to burden you, ma. And Matty’s too young to commute all the way here from Hell’s Kitchen by himself.”

“When I was his age, I walked with my sister five miles to the town and back every day.”

“But you didn’t live in New York, ma.”

“You’re being too soft on him. He’s a difficult child, he needs a firm hand. I don’t like this modern approach. Gonna spoil ‘im rotten.”

“He’s a good boy, ma. He just… he just gets bored. He’s smarter than kids twice his age.”

“It’s not right for a child to think he knows better than adults. It’s not how I raised Gracie.”

“Forgive me, ma,” Dad says, and there’s something wrong in his voice, an off-key in a tune you know well, “but where’s Grace now?”

 _Pow!_ Batman socks the Penguin square in the jaw. Matt shifts on his butt but he hears the tee-vee and nothing else.

“I’m sorry, ma, I shouldn’t have said that—”

“Matthew, sweetheart.” Matt turns around then. Grandma is smiling and her mouth is thin and it doesn’t look like a smile. “Come here and kiss grandma good-bye.”

Matt stands up. Batman is playing on the tee-vee. He’s already seen this episode but it’s still playing on the tee-vee.

Matt leans in and smacks the air over Grandma’s sunken cheek. Matt leans away from the blanket and it screws up at him mean and la-di-da. Matt’s hands are itchy. Grandma smiles and her bird eyes roam above Matt’s head.

“I feel it’s time for my pills, Nurse.”

“I—uh, good-bye, ma,” Dad says.

Nurse goes and Dad goes after her and Matt goes after Dad. When Dad shrugs in his jacket, Nurse presses a small something into Matt’s hand: red tinfoil candy. Matt grins up at her and Nurse puts a finger to her lips. They leave and right before he goes, Matt glances back at her; Nurse blows him a kiss.

The sky is bright and blue again. Dad takes Matt’s hand and Matt clutches Dad’s hand back.

 

Before bed Matt kneels in front the Virgin Mary and puts his hands together like the angels on holy cards.

Matt knows “Our Father, who art in Heaven” and “Hail Mary, full of grace” and “Angel of God, my guardian dear”, and he says each three times. Grandma taught him other prayers, but he doesn’t remember the others. Matt says all these he knows and says a prayer of his own.

“Dear Lord Jesus, it’s Matt. Grandma says you’re too busy to listen to me, and that I should pray to my patron saint, or to the Virgin Mary, but you can hear everything and I forgot what Saint Matthew is the patron of.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t prayed a lot. I’m sorry that yesterday I only said _Our Father_ once and went to sleep. I was very tired.”

“Please give kisses to Mommy in Heaven. And please, Lord Jesus, take the devil out of me. I promise I will pray every night and don’t say _Our Father_ only once, even when I’m tired, and I’ll pray in the morning too. Mommy must be very sad that I have the devil. Dad has the devil, too, so it’s okay, but Mommy is an angel and I don’t want her to be sad. And I don’t care if Grandma is sad. I’m sorry, I know this is very bad.”

“Please bless Grandma with health, even though I don’t care if she’s sad, and please bless Dad. And uh, bless Grandpa too. I’m sorry I’m asking so much of you, Lord Jesus. I will try to be good for you and to pray. All my love, Matt.”

Matt stands up and slides under the covers. He doesn’t feel the devil in him, but maybe you can’t feel it. He _is_ a little stubborn. He doesn’t feel like it’s a bad thing, but it must be the devil in him talking. Matt shifts. Bed is cozy and warm, but Matt can’t get snug _just_ enough. The night lamp casts long shadows on the wallpaper like witch’s fingers with crooked nails, and shifting shapes look like feet shuffling in the slit under his door.

Matt squeezes his eyes very hard and pulls the comforter over his chin and tries to think of names for all seven cats he’s going to have when he’s an adult.

 

_Four little devils, all dressed in red,_

_Tried to get to Heaven on the end of a thread._

_Thread string got broken, down they all fell._

_Instead of going to Heaven, they went to…_

The world is on fire.

The world blacks out. He can’t see. He can’t see. There was a street and there was a truck. Shouting. What color was the truck? He forgot. The truck – this is important. The truck was at the end of the street. Old man crossed the street, and the truck was no longer at the end of the street and it was there, and then he stepped on the street. He remembers the street. Where did the street go?

The street is gone. The fire swallowed it all. It goes like this: eyes, ears, nose. Body; his arms, his legs. Set on fire and the world goes black. Blacked out, but white. Blank. He can’t see; oh, but there is so much. The white is everywhere, like air, but heavy. Cotton candy. Sound made frothy and sticky – he can’t hear it but he feels it. It’s in his ears, meaty fist forcing in and cork-screwing. Grinding his ear drums. They’re called that – ear drums. His ears are drumming.

What is there: fire tongues, and they’re licking his skin, and slithering like snakes under his ribs, and crawling inside his eye holes. His useless eyes – he can’t see. What else is there: reek, sulfur. It reeks of excrements. He’s suffocating on smell that is smoke in his mouth and his nose. Stinging and thick like water, but burning. Everything is bathed in fire.

They are touching him – hands. Hands in a cloud of stink-taste. Heavy on his tongue. Hands are fever-warm and coarse, like devilskin. They pulsate with thousand live worms under gum-y clay.

The hands are saying something to him. They thrum with words. No, not hands – the someone they’re attached to. He hears vibration; it’s new, hearing like this, but it’s familiar, too.

“Matty,” the hands are saying.

 _Dad_ , he mouths. It slides out of his lips and pops into the ether. The fire sucks it in.

He tries to open his eyes; his eyes are not closed. He sees black and he sees white and he sees nothing. The sight is burning. Can seeing burn? He sees the world on fire but seeing can’t burn so he doesn’t see it. The fire is an inch under his skin.

“I can’t see,” he says.

 

The world keeps burning.

Matt is back at home. He can’t see; it feels like skinning his knee, except all over his body, and it sounds like a rabid dog, and it smells very, very bad, like when he’s sick and even pizza makes him queasy, or when his head hurts and everything is sensitive and terrible. But Dad says he’s back at home. He can’t see Dad, but Dad took Matt’s hands and let him map out his face – the crusty scab on his forehead, the hard bone in his nose, the scar from the stiches. Matt feels it now. He doesn’t even have to touch. Dad’s always there, a solid warm block, landmark in a new country. So it’s ok.

He has a cane, like an old man with bent back and hands like willow twigs. He hates it. The first time they give the cane to him, Matt throws it as far as he can. It rattles on the ground – mean sound. Dad says, “come on, Matty, at least give it a try.” Matt can hear his nervous heart and it’s very upsetting. Matt doesn’t want Dad to worry – Dad worries so much – so he takes the cane. But he hates the cane and he’s _never_ going to use it. He just doesn’t tell Dad this.

He can’t see and the sounds are confusing and he keeps tripping. He’s not going to use the cane. He’s _not_. Matt’s throat closes up, childish tears pinch his useless eyes – stupid, stupid, stupid. He feels like throwing up, and Matt swallows his spit, and his head is thudding. He feels like he’s sick but he’s not _sick_ – he’s just useless and weak and shit.

Dad says, “lie down, Matty.” So he lies down. He whispers in his head: _See? You’re worrying Dad. He’s worried about you, because you’re too stupid to do something so easy like walking. The blind manage to live their lives. It’s shit excuse. You’re blind but it’s not why you’re useless – it’s just you. If you were better, Dad wouldn’t have to worry. Try better – or can’t you even do that?_

And then he thinks: _It’s not fair. Everything hurts. Why should I care how_ Dad _feels? It’s me who’s hurting. Dad has no right to make it even harder on me with his stupid worrying. I can be whiny and unreasonable. This would be hard on anyone._

And then he whispers: _stupid, weak, shit_.

 

He’s tired of the thoughts that won’t shut up in his head and the noise that never stops pushing in all around him, but his stupid brain won’t just _sleep_. He can’t stop listening to the sirens. It doesn’t feel like a game anymore; he doesn’t have to guess the stories behind them now.

NYPD, FREEZE!

Oh, _GOD_ , somebody—somebody… there’s so much blood…

—CUNT, I’m gonna fucking KILL you, gonna cut your fucking TITS off—

_HELP_

You like it, WHORE? Yeah, look at her, she fucking loves it. FUCK, yeah, choke on it, BITCH…

“Fucking,” Matt murmurs. “Whore, tits.”

Garbled noise. Like a dog whining but a person. Skin slapping skin. Bang, bang, bang – gunshots. There’s a lot of gunshots.

Matt presses his thumbs into his ears. Fucking, whore, tits. Bitch, cunt, shit. _Help me, please, somebody help, no, no, no, oh God,_ help _—_

“This is just like a movie,” Matt says out loud. His voice echoes in his ears – it’s weird and unpleasant. Like that movie where a man had sex with a woman, but it was wrong somehow, and then he killed her and hacked her into pieces. Her leg was a pasty slab and the blood was very red. Matt thought it was too red, like not real blood. Then Dad came home and he was very angry and Matt couldn’t watch TV for a week. Just like that movie. “Fucking, whore, tits.”

His head hurts. He wants to sleep. The city won’t let him – this is how they call it, Matt remembers. The city that never sleeps.

SHOTS FIRED, _SHOTS FIRED_ —it’s so loud. Will it ever stop? The city never sleeps – so Matt won’t too. How long can a person go without sleep before they snap, he wonders. There was a documentary, wasn’t it? He remembers: a woman stayed awake for a whole year. She just couldn’t fall asleep.

Matt sees it at once: blue screen, like for class photos, a journalist lady smiling plastic and wide, a camera. _Tell me, how do you manage to stay up?_ It’s the easiest thing in the world. I think I have some kind of a rare disorder – my brain just won’t sleep. _Fascinating! But don’t you ever get tired?_ Oh, sure. I’m tired all the time. _That must be very hard. What a terrible burden to carry when you’re so young._

Everyone’s got their cross to bear, Grandma always says. Grandma’s sickness, Dad’s worry; Matt should be strong enough for his. There were martyrs not much older than him, eaten on by birds, dismembered, burnt alive – and they took it. He will be strong, like martyrs, and bear this cross and won’t say a thing.

The city is so loud.

“Fucking, whore, tits,” Matt says. If he’s going to follow the example of the martyrs, he probably shouldn’t say it. But now that he thinks that, it won’t quiet, like a catchy tune you hear on the radio and then it plays on a loop in your head: fucking, whore, tits. Bitch, cunt, shit. Motherfucker, asshole, dick.

Matt drags himself from bed. It is like the whole city is crammed into his bedroom with him. He skips a curb, but the curb is not there, and he stumbles and knocks against the sharp tip of his desk. He bites hard on his lip. Fucking, whore, tits. He’s not going to use the _fucking_ cane. He feels his way around: here’s the desk, here’s the chair, here’s the closet. His hand slides on the plastic-wood, brushes cool metal – he clutches the knob. The box is on the bottom shelf. It is white and has letters JHS on the top. Matt can’t see the color or the letters. He feels around; there, the box. Inside there are many things: envelops with cards – these, he puts aside. A small book, New Testament – useless, now. A lot of useless paper. A shape that is soft and hard – clay angel, wing broken and stored away. And under all that: a string light and limp like water, as if crinkle-cut but not crinkle-cut.

Matt fishes it out. Thumbs it – polished wood, cool silver, bead and loop and bead and loop makes a rosary. A christening gift from Grandma, very precious, bought in the town in Italy where Padre Pio was born. It smells like sandalwood; Matt doesn’t know what sandalwood smells like, but he thinks it smells something like this.

He sits back on his heels. He should pray, now. “Hail Mary” for strings of beads, single bead is “O Father”, the cross is… the cross is “Glory be to the Father” or “I believe in God”, but what about the medallion? He forgets. He’ll just say “Hail Mary” for the medallion. Maybe God won’t mind.

 _Hail Mary, full of grace—he FUCKING won’t leave, PLEASE, send somebody over, he ALWAYS comes back—_ Padre Pio had stigmata – Matt’s seen the pictures, hands wrapped in bloody rags. Matt digs the cross into the inside of his palm. What if he woke up and sudden wounds would open up in his hands like poppies blossoming? How would he hold a pen, or a fork? _Our Lord is with thee—STOP this, the kids are sleeping, DON’T—_ Matt flexes his hand. It must hurt a lot. It must be very brave to hurt so much and be strong. God gave Padre Pio this pain and Padre Pio took it and didn’t curse God and was strong and holy. _Blessed art thou among women—GOD, please, he’s FUCKING CRAZY, he’s going to KILL ME—_ Matt drives in the cross harder. You must be very good to take so much pain.

— _and blessed is the fruit of thy womb—make him shut up, WOMAN, I got work in the morning, J—Jesus._ Something in his palm pops to the side – a vein maybe. His hand cramps. He loosens it. _Holy Mary, Mother of God—I’m not resisting, please—_ He rubs his thumb over the center of his palm, over a small indentation there. He can’t see, but he thinks it’s red.

 _Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death._ The city chatters; muffled, now. TV playing in another room. Dad used to watch TV when Matt was in bed. Matt would lie awake and listen to low voices. Try to make them out. Familiar hum droning on and on like a lullaby.

He stands up. His knees whine like door hinges, like an old person. Matt lies back on bed. Sheets prick him like stubborn mosquitos. His eyes itch with sand. The world is a fireplace giving off warmth to the room.

_Amen._

 

The days are days again and the nights are nights.

Matt climbs into the comfort of a safe rhythm – prayer, breakfast, bed, dinner, prayer, bed. Then – breakfast, study, bed, dinner, bed. Food is hard – it goes up his throat, like sick. With chicken Kiev, that always comes out rubbery and hospital cafeteria-like, and Brussels, that are vending machine coffee-bitter and gross, Matt would gobble up big chunks, trying not to let it touch his tongue. This is like that. Every meal is like that. Matt chews and gags and swallows, and goes to the bathroom and rinses his mouth in the sink, one, two, three, four, five times. Toothpaste burns like windshield cleaner. His throat burns and his skin burns and the world burns.

Matt puts the rosary in his pocket. Runs his fingers over the beads, over, and over, and over. Hail Mary, full of grace. Is this because of the devil in me? Why do I see the world on fire? Why do I see hell? I haven’t died yet.

“How are you doing?” Dad asks.

Yesterday was Sunday – Sundays are just days now. No dinners, no Church. Dad came back very late again. Matt doesn’t get to watch the fights now, but he remembers – dead eyes, hell-red blood seeping down his face. What Dad is doing for him. Matt can’t see the blood but it spurts on his tongue, smell-taste, copper penny and sweet.

Matt imagines telling Dad that he smells blood and he hears something crunchy moving in Dad’s face. That Braille hurts his fingers and that he didn’t study today and lied down and recited “Hail Mary” out loud until the city stopped banging at the window. That some nights the city won’t let him sleep and he hears—

 _The boy’s not right. You need to put him in a facility._ What facility, ma? I’m behind on rent, Matty needs new books, he—he’s so smart, he was going to make something of himself— _What about the settlement money?_ There’s no money, they covered his hospital bills, therapy, most of his blind crap, but it’s all gone now. All gone, ma. _I have some saved, not a lot, but should be enough to put him up with professionals._ I can’t— _For God’s sake, the boy was catatonic for weeks. You can’t take care of him, Jack._ He’s better, ma, he’s learning Braille, such a brave little soldier, my Matty—He’s a good kid. Stronger than me. I can’t give up on him.

Matt smiles.

“I’m good, Dad. I’m getting better at this.”

“That’s—that’s good,” Dad says. Sighs, a weight off his back. Matt digs the rosary cross into the inside of his palm.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Matt says.

Matt read in a book before his eyes have burned: people get used to everything. He’s strong, he’s smart – he’s going to get better. The world on fire nicks and burns; Matt rolls the beads of the rosary between his fingers. Come on, Matty. Get to work.

Devil-thoughts come to him: _I’m tired. Braille makes me sick and the fucking cane is annoying and embarrassing and I don’t want to be strong. Why can’t I be petty and angry and mean? I can lie in bed all days and do nothing if I want to._

They say: _I am doing so much. I am doing so much. Can’t you see? The world burns and I don’t say a peep. Why are you always worrying? I’m being strong, being brave: you should be happy. Why aren’t you happy? I wanna scream: I am doing so much! Stop worrying. Please, I can’t take the worry. It’s too heavy._

This is his cross to bear. People get used to everything. He’s strong, he’s smart. A stupid children’s counting-out song. Dumb words put together that make no sense at all.

He’s going to make the words make sense. He is. Dad doesn’t have to worry about him.

He just needs to try harder.

 

_Three little devils, all dressed in red,_

_Tried to get to Heaven on the end of a thread._

_Thread string got broken, down they all fell._

_Instead of going to Heaven, they went to…_

“Faggot.”

They’re talking about him. He just knows they are.

“Did you see the look he gave me when we sat down, like he’s _sooo_ great? Fag.”

He won’t turn around. He won’t give them the satisfaction.

“I heard that the old man stopped coming. Probably got sick of him.”

“That serves him right.”

Matt turns around.

“What did you say?”

Matt doesn’t care what they think. Nate is bad food sticking to his gums from not brushing his teeth, and smelly t-shirt because he sweats like a pig running on the field in full sun, and pus-scabs he always picks off. He’s gross. His bird-brained minion, Piotr, is a big, dumb lump of body heat and peeling skin with a squeaky eunuch voice – he’s going through a mutation, bad. Piotr says it means he’ll have a low manly voice later. Matt says it means he sounds like a girl. They’re Neanderthals and Matt doesn’t give a dead rat’s ass about them. But if they think they can say this crap about him, they got another thing coming.

“Freak,” Nate spits, low but so that Matt can hear him. Piotr guffaws like a monkey. “I said, you got what’s coming to you. You act you’re so much better than everybody, you and that wacko old man, Cane. But you ain’t special.”

“His name is Stick.”

“That’s what I said. _Wack_. Probably why he even wanted you around in the first place. He’s mental and so are you.”

“I’d rather be mental than stupid, fart-breath,” Matt bites back. He smiles meanly. “At least I don’t wet the bed.” He takes a dramatic sniff. “Something smells like pee.”

Nate heats up. Matt can’t really smell the pee on him – but he has, before. Nate’s a bet-wetter and they all know it.

“Yeah, you!” Nate cries. Sister Constance turns around and shushes him sternly. Nate stoops down on the bench. Matt continues to smirk at him wide and venomous in victory.

“Dunno why that old wacko took so long,” Nate mutters. “How could anyone stand you? Even your mom didn’t want you.”

“My mom is dead,” Matt says, low. His mouth is dry.

“No, she’s not,” Piotr pipes in. Matt whirls at him.

“What do you know? Make like a banana and split.”

They’re sneering at him, right to his face. Matt can’t see them sneering but he _knows_ they are.

“Yeah, where’s your mommy? You never had mommy, didja?” Nate says gleefully.

“My mom is dead,” Matt repeats.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Nate spews, words coming twisted from his puckered lips. “She ain’t dead. But why ain’t your mommy here? Oh, right. She left you and your loser dad.”

“My dad was not a loser!” Matt huffs. Sister Constance shushes them again.

“He was, too,” Nate shoots back. “Your dad was a loser and he got his brains blown out rather than deal with you.”

“You’re lying,” Matt snarls. “My dad was Battlin’ Jack Murdock, a champion. You don’t even have a dad ‘cos your mom opened her legs for anybody who’d have her.” He’s heard, cut-off whispers from the Sisters. “She was a whore and a crackhead. Didn’t you know?” Matt sneers at Piotr. “Nate is a crack baby.”

Piotr looks to Nate.

“He’s a schizo,” Nate says angrily. “Why’d that old coot even hang out with him anyway? I bet he liked touching boys.” Nate’s voice goes nasty and smug. “Did he touch you, Matt-the-rat?”

Piotr snickers and echoes, “Matt-the-rat.”

“Shut up,” Matt hisses.

Nate bends forward and says whisper-loud so everyone but Sister Constance hears:

“You musta sucked, since he left. You think you’re better than the rest of us, but you’re not even good enough for a crazy old man that likes touching boys.”

“Shut _up_!”

Fist goes flying. _Crack_ , burst of pain. A cry, blood-cooper gushing like a waterfall.

“You brobe ma nose!” Nate bawls. “He brobe ma nose! You psypo!”

Sister Constance materializes at his side, bone-grinding fury.

“What on earth is happening here? You’re in _Church_.” Hand like a vise drops on his shoulder and shoves him towards the door. “Outside, _now_.”

Matt retracts his cane and taps half-heartedly after Sister Constance, cradling his split knuckle to his chest. Nate drags along, sniffling and gurgling. The front of his shirt smells like he just won a rare steak eating contest. Matt smirks and then quickly stops.

They go outside; church air and Priest’s dun-dun-dun voice stay behind the door. Sister Constance puts her arms on her hips. Her chest is heaving with furious heartbeat and whistling tight breaths.

“What kind of behavior is this?” Matt sticks out his lip and crosses his arms.

“He brobe ma nose!” Nate whines.

“It’s not broken,” Matt mutters. It’s not; he’d hear it. _Too bad_. “Don’t be such a baby.”

“Be quiet,” Sister Constance barks. “Good gracious, look at you, child. Your entire shirt is soiled with blood. Go to the infirmary, quick, have Sister Faustina do something about the bleeding. And keep your nose in the air.”

Nate sniffles and stomps away. Matt long hears the blood bubbling in his nose; good.

Sister Constance turns to him, sending a whiff of lavender closet freshener still clinging to her veil.

“He started it,” Matt immediately says.

“I don’t care who started it,” Sister Constance huffs. “You should’ve ended it.”

“I have,” Matt mutters.

Air swish, _smack_. Matt doesn’t jump away only from surprise. Stupid, sloppy – Stick would be so disappointed. The sting on his cheek comes a beat later.

“Do not sass me. How dare you act this way in the house of God? He sees all and shakes his head at you. You behaved outrageously, now, when you’re preparing to take the Lord into your heart. Jesus teaches to turn the other cheek and to love your enemies.”

Painful lump clogs his throat. Useless eyes fill with tears. Matt bites the inside of his mouth. He will not cry in front of Sister Constance.

“Jesus doesn’t teach to slap children either,” Matt says with dignity. His voice doesn’t even quiver. He raises his chin proudly. “You may have the Lord in your heart, Sister Constance, but you’re a mean, awful woman and I _hate_ you.”

Then he turns around, blinking back tears – they stand in his eyes and he can’t keep them in very long but he _won’t_ cry here – and strides away.

“Come back here this instant!” Sister Constance cries.

Matt does not come back. He has to get away, as far as he can from Sister Constance’s hateful presence. He rushes towards the dormitory, swinging his cane carelessly in front of him, too fast and high to do anything. He doesn’t care; he doesn’t need the fucking cane anyway. Bathroom stall is the only room with a lock; Matt picks the nearest one and pushes the door latch shut.

He sits on the closed toilet, flings the cane to the side. Stinging tears slip from his chin. Matt wipes them furiously. He puts his forehead on his knees and swallows and swallows and swallows, fist-like lump and stupid sobs.

Steps. Sister Constance’s clacking sturdy heels, fake lavender mist. Softer feet, little bird breaths, rose-scented hand balm – Sister Marianne. Matt rocks on the seat, tries to focus on her like Stick taught him: mushy oatmeal she had for breakfast, a sheen of sweat in her hair under the veil. Her hair smells sweat-sweet and nettle. Turpentine mixed with clean skin smell; Sister Faustina rubbed her cramped back last night. Nothing lingers like the smell of turpentine on skin.

“He’s probably hiding in the bathroom again,” Sister Marianne is saying.

Sister Constance sighs.

“You go, Marianne. I don’t have strength for that devil child.”

Wet click; Sister Marianne puckers her mouth.

“It’s that awful old man’s doing. I told Sister he was bad news.”

“What’s done is done,” Sister Constance says heavily. “And what else could’ve we done? Nothing was working with that child. That man showing up, it was like a blessing.”

“All devils seem like it,” Sister Marianne days darkly.

“You’re wrong,” Matt mutters. “Stick _was_ a blessing. He’s worth ten of you, Sisters.”

It’s Matt who’s the devil. Stupid, weak, shit. They want him to be weak. They made him soft.

“And I pray to the Lord every day to give me the wisdom to know the good from the evil,” Sister Constance is saying. “And I pray for that child, too.”

“I don’t want you to pray for me,” Matt mumbles with a frown.

“He’s a queer little thing,” Sister Marianne says. Tinny voice, dripping with pity. Matt hates it. Matt hates her. “He spent too many days bound to bed and then with that awful man. The problem with him is that he doesn’t have any friends among his peers.”

“The problem with him is that he doesn’t have the fear of God in him,” Sister Constance grunts. “We’ve been giving him too much special treatment. It’s gone to his head, he used to be a quiet, nice boy and now he’s grown unruly and impertinent. Giving me the lip, thinking he knows better than his elders. I’m the one to blame, I should’ve been more firm, don’t make an exception for him because of his handicap. I fear the other children resent him because of that, too.”

“He’s a queer little thing,” Sister Marianne says again. Matt scowls. He’s no such thing. “He needs to play with other children, brighten up. He’s always so somber. Like a little adult. It’s disconcerting.”

Sister Constance’s voice grows low and serious.

“When he first got here, before his… _episodes_ started, I don’t think I’ve seen him shed a single tear. His father has been murdered and his family – what little he had of it – didn’t want to take him in, and he never once cried. What kind of child does that?”

When he first got here, orphanage was ringing noises, million smells, starchy biting cloths, and starchy nauseating food, and starchy cold Sisters with dry rubbed-coarse hands. Dry rubbed-coarse hands slicking back his hair, straightening his clothes, taking his arm in a grip like claw to cross the street, fixing and prodding him without warning, sharp, brief clinical touches. He remembers _Come, child_ and _Do this, child_ and _Stop whining, child_ and a sucking black hole where Dad’s warm presence used to be. He remembers wanting to be good. Wanting to make Dad proud.

Matt glares and sends in Sister Constance’s direction with force: _You’re a mean, awful woman_.

“He’s… different,” Sister Marianne says tentatively. “It’s somewhat understandable, with his, his episodes and his handicap, but… I don’t know. Maybe we should sit him for another session with Father Albert.”

“You know how that went last time,” Sister Constance says morosely. “He’s obstinate. It’s good that he’s taking First Communion now. Maybe Confession will help.”

“He just needs something to busy his mind with. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, especially with children. Maybe he should learn the piano? He could play at Communion.”

“The child is blind, Marianne,” Sister Constance says flatly. “How will he read the notes?”

“Oh! I don’t know. But the blind are said to have a good ear for music,” Sister Marianne reasons.

“Hm,” Sister Constance says consideringly. “Perhaps we should look into that. I’ll ask Sister Josephine if she’d be willing to sit down with him and walk him through a hymn or two. Lord knows I could stand to have that child off my hands.”

Matt sticks out his tongue at the stall door.

“Joke’s on you,” he tells it. “I don’t want your nasty hands near me anyway. And I’m not going to play the piano. Not on your life.”

Fabric rustling, a sigh.

“Well, no point in wasting more time. You should go get him, Marianne, the mass is almost over.”

Shuffling light feet, first on wood, then on tile. Rose-scented balm and body warmth seep through the flimsy stall door.

“Matthew,” Sister Marianne says quietly. “Come out, now.”

Matt sticks out his lip and doesn’t answer.

“Matthew,” Sister Marianne repeats. “Sister Constance is already very cross with you. Do you want to upset her more?”

Matt thinks about ignoring her and thinks about biting back.

“I don’t care how Sister Constance feels,” he finally says. “She’s a mean, awful woman and I hate her,” he repeats decisively.

“Oh!” Sister Marianne gasps. “How can you say such a thing? Hatred is a sin.”

Matt thinks about that.

“Maybe I don’t hate Sister Constance,” he allows. “But she’s mean and unfair and I am cross with her, too.”

“Sister Constance only does what’s best for you,” Sister Marianne says soothingly. “She’s strict sometimes but that’s because she cares. When you did something bad, and you say you’re sorry and be honest and remorseful, she’ll forgive you and God will, too. Come out, now, Matthew.”

Matt considers it.

He unlocks the door. Then he swings it open; he doesn’t stand up.

“Come, go say sorry to Sister Constance. Oh, what did you do with your cane again?” Matt shrugs. Sister Marianne bends down and fishes for it behind the toilet, grunting. Matt doesn’t move his leg to let her and feels only a little bit bad about it. Sister Marianne stands up and puts the cane in his hands with a tut. “What am I going to do with you? You kids would lose your head if it wasn’t attached, I swear.”

Matt doesn’t say that he knew where the cane was and that he always knows where everything is; Sister Marianne can think what she wants about him. Matt doesn’t care. She’s wrong, anyway, and ignorant, and that way Matt has an edge. Stick would approve.

Matt lets Sister Marianne usher him out – by hand, like he’s five – and down the hall where Sister Constance’s waiting like an unhappy pillar of salt.

“There you are,” she says unhappily. “Are you ready to apologize?”

Matt crosses his arms over his chest and raises his chin.

“I’ll apologize to Nate when I have something to apologize for,” he says coolly. “And I’ll apologize to Sister,” he adds generously, “if Sister apologizes to me first.”

Sister Constance gnashes her teeth. Sister Marianne turns to her and then turns to Matt. Matt wonders what the expression on her face is.

“I see,” Sister Constance says curtly. “Maybe you’ll rethink this on an empty stomach because you’re not having dinner today.”

“I wasn’t hungry anyway,” Matt says, even though it’s a lie. His stomach sucks around nothing, worrying. “And cafeteria food is repugnant,” he adds, which is true. He’s learned this word the other day and he thinks it fits very well. The food is mushy and _repugnant_.

“Look at mister smart mouth!” Sister Constance huffs. Matt opens his mouth to protest, _he’s not “smart-mouthed”, he’s just_ smart _, it’s not a sin_ — “Don’t you talk back now! You march to the church and sit quietly through the rest of the mass or there will be very serious consequences for you, young man.” And with that, Sister Constance strides away, rap, tap, rap, tap, sturdy heels on a dull wooden floor.

Sister Marianne shakes her head, effusing nettle and rose-sweet sweat.

“Oh, lambkin,” she sighs. “You should’ve just apologized.”

And then she follows after Sister Constance.

 

At recess, Matt sits on the concrete ledge of the fence in the far end of the courtyard. He’d like to sit on top of the monkey bars, but they don’t let him on there because he’s “handicapped”, or on the swings, but they’re always taken by the popular kids, so he sits on the curb.

Matt doesn’t like recess – he’s weird like that. Most kids spent all lessons counting minutes to the bell, but Matt intends to make the most of them. He’s going to get into a good high school and they’ll be sorry, but it will be too late. Matt doesn’t care anyway. The classes are boring and the teachers are dumb, and he knows all the material already, so instead Matt studies for the next semester and reads more interesting things; it’s not like they can tell, with his Braille books. Or argues with the teachers sometimes, that can be fun too. But recess is a waste of time – if it weren’t for it, they’d be allowed to leave sooner. And how long can you eat lunch anyway? Matt always spends most of recess sitting on the curb and kicking up gravel. Waste of time.

So he’s observing. _Not_ stalking; he’s not listening for a specific person, so it’s ok. And it’s good to have dirt on people, even when he won’t use it. He doesn’t care about the other kids, but it’s smart. It’s what Stick would do. Matt pays attention to his surroundings. It’s not eavesdropping if he can’t help but hear it, right?

They’re talking about him.

“He’s possessed, you know. Like, by a demon.”

Whiny babyish voice and heavy, long hair flapping like a cape in the wind on a twig-like body: that’s Mary. She’s two years younger than Matt and annoying.

“You’re lying.” Tonia, with voice like a boy and mouth smelling like a fake bubble-gum lipstick that’s Sister Marianne’s.

“Am not!” Mary cries. “Mickey said that she heard Sister Helen tell this to Sister Faustina.”

“Mickey is a little liar and attention slut,” Tonia scoffs. “Besides, there’re no such things as demons.”

“Tonia!” Mary gasps. “What would Sister Helen say if she heard you?”

“It’s true,” Tonia says stubbornly. “It’s just a scary story to tell naughty kids so they go to church and be good. Demons don’t exist.”

“I don’t know,” Mary says, crossing her arms. “What about that boy, from the movie? He was a girl in the movie, but they changed it.”

Tonia clicks her tongue impatiently.

“Don’t be stupid. What are you, five? He wasn’t possessed. He was just, you know.” Tonia swirls her finger at her temple. “Loony.”

Mary hides her chin in her shoulder. Matt can’t prove it, but he knows she’s looking at him.

“Do you think he’s a psycho?”

“Oh, totally.” Tonia puts on a conspiratorial voice. “He _broke_ Nate’s nose. In church!”

“Nate’s a butthead,” Mary murmurs.

“Well, duh. But he gives me the creeps. That empty stare of his?” Tonia shudders exaggeratedly.

“He’s blind,” Mary says quietly.

“So?” Tonia huffs. “He’s creepy. Remember that weird old man that used to come for him and they’d be gone for hours?” She says low and dark, with badly-hidden glee: “I bet he took him to, like, perform satanical sacrifices.”

“You said demons weren’t real,” Mary points out.

“They’re not,” Tonia says shortly. “But they’re mental. Who knows what’s inside crazies’ head?”

Mary says nothing for a moment, boring her shoe-tip in the gravel.

“You don’t think he’s possessed?”

“Yeah, ‘cos he’s not,” Tonia retorts.

Mary’s shoe stops.

“Prove it.”

“How would I prove it?” Tonia asks, indignant.

“Ask him,” Mary says. “Or are you scared? I thought he wasn’t possessed,” she says with triumph.

“He’s not!” Tonia calls out. “And I’m not scared. But he’s crazy. You don’t know what he might do.”

“Chicken,” Mary taunts.

“Fine!” Tonia huffs. “God, you’re such a nag!” Mary warms up, her heart beating faster.

Tonia marches up towards him, pebbles flying under her Mary Janes.

“Hey!”

Matt imagines tripping her with his cane. A high-pitched cry, knees scraping bloody through her baggy second-hand tights. Instead, he grunts, “Who is it?”

“It’s Tonia,” she says, offhand. She leans against the fence next to him, props her right foot, the one closer to him, on the concrete ledge. “So, is it true they performed exorcisms on you when you got here?”

Matt clenches his hand around his cane.

“Yeah.”

Tonia’s head snaps to him.

“Really?” she asks, her voice heavy with skepticism. “So how was it?”

“They stood over me and chanted in Latin,” Matt tells her solemnly. “Then Priest sprinkled me with holy water.”

“Yeah?” Tonia’s foot taps on the fence.

Matt nods. “But do you want to know a secret?”

Tonia inches closer.

“It didn’t work.”

The foot stills.

“What?”

“I told them I’m all good now, but I lied.” He twists his lips in a snarl. “There’s a devil in me. I can feel it.”

“I don’t believe you.” She crosses her arms; her heart is quickening in her chest.

Matt bares his teeth. “Ssasheossa hasseo. _Tahnahh_.”

“What are you doing?” Tonia demands, her voice wavering a little.

“Deus meus cosmateus,” Matt intones. “Amse kadamse! Shasseeme Spiritus Sanctus.”

“Stop it!” Tonia squeaks.

“Fasi Hath!” Matt hisses at her.

Tonia shrieks and springs off the fence, Mary Janes crunching on the gravel.

“He’s a freak! Run!”

She bumps into Mary and grabs her sweaty hand, and they both run to the school screaming bloody murder.

Matt smirks. Stupid girls. That oughta show them.

He traces a circle in the pebbles with his cane. Let them think he’s crazy. Maybe they’ll be scared that he’s gonna cut them up in their sleep and they’ll leave him alone. It’s kind of cool, if you think about it. He’d rather be the psycho over the blind kid. _Psycho_ is dangerous. _Blind_ is just pathetic.

Matt stills his arm. What if he really were crazy? Maybe he is. He’s weird; crazy people stick out, too. There always was something wrong with him. The senses—who can smell yesterday’s bagel bits stuck between somebody’s teeth? That’s freaky. Crazy. Stick said the senses were a weapon, but they could be both. And he was weird before the accident, anyway. He’s got the devil in him. But Tonia was right about that, there’s no such thing as possession. That’s like schizophrenia.

Matt rubs the circle off the ground with his cane. Except he can’t be crazy if he’s thinking that. Crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. Right? So he can’t be crazy.

He jabs the cane into the gravel. It’s just stupid kid talk. He doesn’t give a damn anyway.

 

On Friday they have mock Confession; except that it’s not mock and they have to confess real sins. But it’s not _the_ Confession before First Communion. So like a rehearsal Confession.

Father James is taking confessions. Father James is beer-bellied and unpleasant; he has that air about him like he disapproves of everything, even good fun that’s not harming anyone. Especially of any and all kinds of fun. Matt imagines Father James has had a martial frown permanently frozen on his face even as a baby – the midwife took him out and exclaimed: “Oh! I’ve never seen such a discontent baby! It looks like it’s about to berate me for delivering him wrong!” And if Father James could speak then, he would. He _radiates_ disapproval.

Sister Helen is supervising them. Sister Helen is like Sister Constance, except dumber than a box of hair. She thinks screeching like a dying owl makes her more authoritative. It just makes her sound like a dying owl.

Piotr goes to kneel first. He stumbles through _Forgive me, Father_ and stammers out his list of sins, repeating himself and saying them like a question; his sweaty palms slip on the wood of the confessional and leave invisible grease stains. The wood sucks the smell like a hungry baby.

“And, uh… I lied—I lied about… uh, I don’t remember what, I—is it a sin? I mean…”

Suddenly it strikes him that he shouldn’t be hearing this. It’s not right. All this is not right.

“I don’t want to go to Confession,” Matt declares.

Sister Helen blinks so furiously that Matt can hear it; he can just picture it, fluttering stupid-angry owl eyes. Like his grandmother, but without the spark.

“What kind of nonsense is this again, child?”

Matt crosses his arms and juts out his chin.

“Matt,” he says. “My name is Matt.” He gives her a mean smile. “The _blind_ one. It can’t be that hard to remember if you only put your mind to it, Sister.”

Sister Helen sucks in a whistling breath, big blotches of heat blossoming on her cheeks. Matt imagines two red circles painted on perfectly like on a Russian doll.

“You should say three Hail Marys for that talk.”

“You can’t give me penance. You’re not a priest,” Matt points out, a little snidely.

Sister Helen huffs.

“Go and confess to Priest James and he’ll tell you the same.”

“I don’t want to go to Confession,” Matt says, louder. A couple closest kids turn their heads in his direction.

“You can’t take First Communion without Confession,” Sister Helen yaps, nearing to her dying owl screech. “Stand in the line and wait your turn.”

“Why do I have to tell my sins to a priest?” Matt argues. “If God hears and knows everything, can’t I just repent in my head? Why there has to be a priest?”

“ _Why, why, why,_ ” Sister Helen parrots. Matt clenches his fists. He doesn’t sound like _that_. “Don’t ask so many questions and listen to people smarter than you. God Himself made the Sacrament of Confession.”

“No, He didn’t. Protestants believe in the same God and they don’t have to confess,” Matt points out, pouting. “And you may be older than me, Sister Helen, but you’re not smarter.”

Sister Helen lunges to grab his ear but Matt dances out of her reach.

“You shut your mouth and go to Confession right now!” she screeches.

“It’s my life!” Matt shouts back. “You can’t make me!”

“Your life belongs to God and, as long as you’re a child, this institution! You sit down and be quiet while you wait for your turn to confess or I’ll give you the beating of your life,” Sister Helen squawks, spit flying everywhere. Matt wipes a drop from his cheek. Yuck.

“I’ll go to Confession, Sister,” Matt says with dignity. “But since you made me, I don’t think it counts for much.” Then he sits down and says nothing more not to give her apoplexy, and also because he didn’t get breakfast today and he doesn’t want to not get dinner too. Sister Helen’s shaking.

Confessed sins, like worms, crawl into his ears. Matt bites the inside of his mouth until warm bubble of blood spurts from it. Metallic and nauseating; he focuses on it. Tries to count all animals scurrying in the Church: there’s a pigeon drinking holy water from the basin, two rats sniffling a crumb by the altar, a mouse perched in the wall – a literal church mouse. It’s hard to pick up everything, the church acoustic is messing with his hearing. Lame excuse. Stick would smack him for it.

He doesn’t want to confess his sins to Father James. But maybe it doesn’t have to be Father James he’ll be confessing to; after all, he’s just an intermediary between him and God. And Father James can’t tell what he says to anyone. Maybe Matt can just forget it’s Father James in the confessional and speak directly to God. He will be listening.

The girl before him, Nia or Nyla, with a small shy voice _(…I had impure thoughts for my best friend…_ ) raises from her knees and lays a kiss on the stole. Matt bites his mouth again. He almost forgets to knock his cane on the confessional and feel his way around to the prayer desk.

Matt kneels and makes the sign of the cross, mumbling, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Then, more clearly: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

The script goes, “It’s been so and so since my last confession” but this is his first time, so Matt is momentarily stumped.

“Yes?” Priest prompts him. “What sins do you want to confess? Other children are waiting.”

Matt licks the blood in his mouth. It tastes red.

“I have the devil in me,” he whispers.

“Is this your idea of a joke, young man?” Priest asks sharply.

“It’s true,” Matt says fervently. “The Sisters believe it too. I heard them.”

“You shouldn’t be eavesdropping,” Priest admonishes.

“Sorry. Is eavesdropping a sin?” Matt asks. He didn’t think so; he hopes it isn’t, because then he’s been sinning _a lot_.

“No,” Priest says, “but it’s a rude thing to do. Do you have any actual sins to confess?”

Matt bites the small wound in his mouth, hard.

“Sometimes…” he says tentatively. “Sometimes I think that I hate God.”

Priest sighs.

“Doubt is weakness. Even Thomas the Apostle succumbed to this human failing; his example teaches us we must trust in God. You mustn’t question the Lord in His infinite wisdom but accept God’s will with humility.”

Blood is pooling in his mouth. Matt swallows it like rust-tinged wine. Like Communion; this is the chalice of my blood. He wonders if his teeth and gums are stained red.

“I don’t understand why He had to take my dad.”

“It’s not for you to understand…”

“If He had to take my dad, why couldn’t He take me too?” Matt rushes the question out. “At least we could be together in Heaven. It’s not fair that I have to live without my dad. I think I’d rather be dead.”

 _Why do I have to live without anyone who loves me_ , Matt thinks.

“Don’t say such ridiculous things. This is a serious sin.” Matt pulls on the wound with his teeth, drawing more blood. “God gave you life and God will take it when He wishes. Is there anything else you want to confess?”

“I… told a lie,” Matt says, thinking of Tonia. “But it was only because—”

“I don’t need to know your justifications,” Priest interrupts him. “You’re not the only one who wants to confess today. It’s inconsiderate.”

“Sorry,” Matt whispers. He searches his mind. “Uh… For these and all the sins of my past life, I ask pardon of God, penance, and absolution from you, Father.”

“For your penance, say three Our Fathers,” Priest grunts. “Say the Act of Contrition.”

“Um… O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell. But most of all because I have offended You, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of Your grace, to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life,” Matt recites while Priest makes the sign of the cross and mutters something in Latin. “Amen.”

“Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.”

“For His mercy endures forever,” Matt mumbles.

Priest knocks on the wall of the confessional. Matt puts his hand on the shelf and pushes himself up, gripping his cane. He takes a step back and then remembers he’s got to kiss the stole. It stinks with old spit and dead moths; Matt quickly pecks the air above it.

Next in line, a gangly boy whose name he forgot, kneels on the prayer desk and says _In the name of the Father_. Matt sits down on the bench. Maybe he could take this time to say the penance so he doesn’t forget later, if he’s waiting anyway. He goes through the prayer three times; it drags on and Matt rushes through the last one, only a little. There: his sins are forgiven.

He should feel lighter now, purer. Matt searches in him for God’s love or some holy feeling; his stomach sucks on nothing. He feels hungry.

 

_Two little devils, all dressed in red,_

_Tried to get to Heaven on the end of a thread._

_Thread string got broken, down they all fell._

_Instead of going to Heaven, they went to…_

Matt crouches on a fire escape like a gargoyle, head cocked to listen.

Church bells ring in his ears, reverberating through his skull and fucking up his concentration. Matt tilts his head again, trying to tune out interference.

“…Matthew?” There. Sister Constance’s hoarse bark-like voice cuts through the hum of the city. When he focuses hard enough, he can hear the phlegm shifting in her throat. Slimy bump, like a bit of a coughed-out lung. Matt follows it sliding up and down, disgusting wet _pop-smack-pop_ , with morbid fascination. “Have you seen him?”

He listens: no answer. A headshake or a shrug, then – harder to hear over the wind. That’s just making excuses, really, he should be able to hear it anyway. Sloppy, and pathetic.

Sister Constance mutters “For God’s sake” under her nose. Matt quirks the corner of his mouth in a smile.

“He’s gone again. I don’t know what to do anymore with that boy.”

“Heavens know how he does it.” Shrill rasp; like a dumb parrot mimicking human speech. Sister Helen. “I’ve never seen a blind person so good at sneaking around.” The smile widens into a sneer. Yeah, chew on that. Hopefully choke on it.

“He may be blind but he’s a teenage boy,” Sister Constance points out; the way she says it, it’s like being a teenager is some great transgression. “I’m losing patience for this juvenile rebel act. This is the third mass he skipped this month…”

Matt stops listening. He swings himself to the next story – somersault from a half-crouch with a brittle metal bar for purchase, not too skimpy – and lands on a AC. Matt uses it as a springing board to leap to the building over.

He has to practice, if he doesn’t want all his training with Stick to go to shit. Stick was an asshole and an old creep who liked to beat up little boys, but he did teach him useful things. Matt scrapes what he has a use for from what is worthless to him – mystical bullshit, childish need to please his memories are colored with, _fucking Stick_ – and that way he can be mature about it. He wouldn’t go back and erase his training in the end; if not for it, he’d still be whining and writhing on bed, or have a Sister wipe his ass like he’s a baby, an invalid. Helpless blind guy. Not even a guy – a pitiful sexless creature incapable of taking care of itself. But Matt can defend himself; he can fight, like a man. Without Stick, surrounded by priests and crazy spinsters, he’d be totally castrated.

Matt balances on a ledge and heaves himself up on the roof, hidden from the street. Day is not the best time for practice. He’d have to sneak out again after dark. There’s not much he can do now without attracting people’s attention; but it’s still a far better use of his time than sitting through another wasted hour of mass.

“God is dead,” Matt tries out on his tongue.

Nietzsche may be a long-obsolete wacko but he got that right. It’s a fucking twenty first century – all this backwards religious crap should’ve been left behind in the old millennium. Any rational man knows that “God” is a nice little fantasy people want to believe in when they’re too weak and stupid to deal with reality. A fossilized myth that’s run its course.

Sister Helen didn’t like _that_ , no. Fools never like to have their small-minded worldview challenged. They’ve been learning philosophy, but God forbids they think on their own! Literally. Well, “learning” is generous, but Matt’s read a whole textbook on it, college-level, because there’s not a lot of choices in the library’s Braille books and he was bored. Saint Thomas Aquinas stuck in his head. Religion and philosophy, isn’t that funny? Both equally bullshit. He doesn’t need dead unwashed old farts to tell him about life, and he doesn’t need dead rambling-drunk bigots to preach to him about life beyond life. “Unmoved mover,” like Matt couldn’t come up with something better himself. There’s no great design in the universe, and even if there was, it sure as fuck wouldn’t prove that some random madman who died on a cross a million years ago was the son of God.

Matt knows well what the world is – the world is violence, a never-ending chain of live things feeding on dead, and then them dying too and being fed on. _Pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris_ _._ A finished sentence, no salvation for the soul beyond the grave. Maybe, just maybe, _something_ exists other than this realm, but a human could spend his whole life searching for it and would never find it, so why try? God, along with every useless thought experiment, should be put to the ground.

 _God is dead_ , Matt repeats to himself and vaults from building to building, over the heads of New Yorkers too busy staring at their own feet to notice anyway. There’s no use in wasting time on dead things.

 

Slap, like a gunshot. Matt flinches, from the noise more than pain. It burns but less than his fury.

“What’s in that head on yours? Do you think that we don’t have better things to do than chase after you?” Sister Helen screeches. “Answer me when I’m talking to you!”

“No, I don’t think that at all,” Matt mutters, every word spiked with biting sarcasm. Most of the time Matt likes his sunglasses – slick and red-tinged, kinda cool and mysterious vibe – but they cramp the full force of his glare. He still glares, channeling every ounce of hatred that burns in him.

“Where have you been? Hm?” Sister Helen drills. “Where is it that you disappear to all the time?” Despite the shrill tone, a curious note rings in her voice.

“I don’t know what are you talking about, Sister,” Matt says coolly. “I’ve never left. I was here the entire time reading in bed.”

 _Smack_. Matt gnashes his teeth, growl rising in his throat.

“You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” Sister Helen spews mockingly. He clenches his fists. “Well, you’re not the first difficult, no-good youth who thinks more of himself than he really is this place has seen. In Lord’s eyes, all men are equal, and you’re not any more special than everybody here. Maybe an hour you’re going to spend on your knees making it up with prayer will teach you some humility.”

Matt meditates. God is not listening. He has to stay sharp, stay focused. Remember his training, for when he gets out of this miserable, dark place and finally be able to realize his full potential. He’ll leave the claustrophobic old streets of Hell’s Kitchen washed with piss and blood, leave this whole stinking, will-sucking city behind.

He used to dream that when he grew up, he’d search for Stick. He’d find him in some remote, exotic place – it always looked like a scene from _North_ , maybe because it’s the last movie he remembers watching – and he’d show Stick what he can do, and Stick would see that he made a mistake, and he’d say, _You grew up to be a worthy warrior, I’m proud of you, Matty—_

But these are child’s dreams, child’s stupid fantasies. Stick is an asshole and Matt doesn’t need his approval. Doesn’t want it. The old man can shove it. Matt will become so much more than Stick envisioned training him and he’ll make Stick regret ever leaving him behind.

No, that’s not right either. It’s still about Stick. Matt knows better, _is_ better than that. Fuck Stick. Matt will leave New York and go—wherever, he’ll study medicine at Oxford, he’ll graduate from Yale and work his ass off all the way up to Supreme Court, he’ll be the first blind US Marine, he’ll—he’ll get a Doctorate in Political Science and be a big name in academia while secretly making money cage fighting—his future stretches out before him, branching off in million different directions, white-hot smudges streaking his world of red. He can do anything, everything he puts his mind to; he just has to power through these remaining couple years and then he’ll finally live his life.

 _God is dead_ , he thinks. Mind controls the body, the body controls the enemy, and the soul means jack shit. Or something.

Matt feels eyes on him: nose-tingling girly perfume that’s gone sour, cartoony boobs ballooning like two melons on a thin child’s body. Mary. Wonder what she did to land herself the same punishment as him, kneeling on the cold, hard stone. She’s taking it worse than him; her knobbly knees tremble, her attention wanes and wanders towards him.

Matt sticks out his tongue and flashes her the devil horns. Mary gasps and knocks her knees on the stone. Her delicate skin is gonna bruise like a peach, nasty yellow-purple. Matt bites on a smirk, dark, burning satisfaction sinking low in his gut. The devil that lives there bares his fangs and hisses.

 

Orphanage’s settling for the night.

Matt’s bottom bunk because they don’t want to open themselves to a lawsuit in case a blind kid would fall from bed and break his neck. He used to think it real funny – now, it just makes him pissed. He asks to watch a movie with audio description _one time_ and he has to suck it up and realize the real world won’t cater to him, but suddenly he’s too fragile to sleep on the top bunk! Last time he checked, sighted people don’t sleep with their eyes open either. He almost said then that he manages to aim in the toilet just fine. Imagined Sister Helen’s choking seagull wheeze of indignation. It somewhat vindicated him.

Matt is stretched on his back, arms under his head. Mapping out the ribs in the bedframe above him by micro-changes in the air flow. Nate chucks a football at his face. Matt winces, lets it bounce off his forehead. Thwack, thump; Nate snickers. Nate throws like a girl, but it successfully breaks his concentration. It would feel good, to throw the ball back and knock out his teeth. Would feel good for a moment and then would come the questions. Nate’s not worth it. Matt tosses the ball back limply in a completely wrong direction. Piotr and Lance, Nate’s stupid lackeys, hoot with laughter.

 _You’re gonna age out of the system just like me and you don’t even have a handicap for an excuse_ , Matt thinks spitefully and finds that he doesn’t feel bad about it. Anyway, they’ll leave him alone soon enough if he doesn’t engage. The guys call him a fag and try to trip him up once in a while, but they know not to seriously fuck with him. Matt had to break Nate’s nose three times for that lesson to stick, if only because Nate got fed up being that guy who had his ass beat by a blind kid. It doesn’t matter. None of them matter; in two years, seven months, and twenty-two days, Matt will be out of Saint Agnes and free of all this for good.

He waits for the noise to die out. Guys shoving each other and cackling too loudly. Small kids sniffling. Wailing. God, the wailing. Will someone come shut them up? Oh, there comes Sister Constance, grumbling – that’s no good, all the little ones hate her. More wailing. Great. Girls, two rooms down, giggling like a pack of hyenas on crack. Almost as bad as crying. They put on their stupid CDs and howl the lyrics out of sync, head-splitting cacophony of tuneless voices. _My loneliness ain’t killing me no mo-o-ore…_ Ugh, he hates that song. He hates that music, badly synthesized and teeth-rotting sweet, and worst of all, worming into his brain so that even his dreams are set to obnoxious pop soundtrack. Sister Helen bangs the door open with a screech. The only time Sister Helen is good for something. Girls turn the stereo off but keep whispering between themselves. Matt doesn’t know what’s worse, Britney Spears or this, every silly word of their girl-babble as if breathed right into his ear. _Mimi, baby, you know I love you the most in the world, but you can be such an uptight bitch. You need to, like, get fucked good. She should just fuck herself with that stick up her ass. Shut_ up!

Chatter fades away as girls one by one tire themselves into sleep. Piotr’s snores, he doesn’t need super-hearing to catch that, even breaths stirring the air in the room. Not faking. Sister Constance’s sleep cough-snorts, Sister Helen’s whistling inhales. Sleeping. Sister Marianne warm from half a bottle of sherry in her; she won’t get up tonight. Matt lets the familiar creaks and hums of the house tide over him, the only off-key sound his own breathing and Tonia’s down the hall.

Of all the girls, Tonia is the worst. Two years younger than him, three, technically, going by birth years, but she’s nothing like those wimpy little middle schoolers putting their heads down at the sight of high school kids. The kind of girl you see in the movies – her arms linked with a new girlfriend every week, she and her clique of girls older than her parade around, daring you to get in their way. Won’t step back in time and they’d trample your feet, heavy platforms crushing your toes, their laugh noisy and mean. Stinks of cigarettes like she’s been chain-smoking for a decade, and masks it with sugary vodka-perfume; charms old creeps hanging out at bodega for it, and drinks it from soda bottles right in Sister Constance’s face.

Tonia’s been sneaking out after dark; most nights Matt goes out, so does she. Her heart is fluttering in her chest – the way she pops her gum every time Sister Helen tries to get a word in, you’d think she wasn’t afraid of anything. She’s been caught doing worse, too—but he doesn’t care to figure Tonia out. Enough that she won’t be trouble now. Matt slides from his bunk, carefully pries wider the window, and slips into the night.

The night city air goes to his head like a sip of Scotch – sewer rot and fumes and bodily excretions of eight million people stewing in still heat. Near solid layer of filth steeped through his pores and curled around him like second skin. New York, New York. The city so nice they named it twice. One for a New York that’s more a promise than a city, that smells like grime and sweat-soaked leather and childhood. And the other for a New York that’s a fist around his throat, rust-blood and screams and never-ending sirens. He’s caught in the space between them, the city walls closing on him and the devil pressing against the bars of his ribcage.

“God is dead,” Matt mutters. God is dead but the devil lives inside him. Stick saw it in him. Matt has a rage burning in his blood that’s too old for his soul. Something black and fucked-up that marks him different from other people. More beast than man but beyond human, living on the fringes of their small world. Matt’s world is hell, that’s screams and putrid trash and fire.

Tonia tears into his thoughts like an annoying fly—heels step on a window ledge, and down the drainpipe. Clever. Tonia’s heart hammers inside her like she’s going into cardiac arrest. Matt doesn’t give a fuck whatever bad news guy or dealer she’s meeting tonight. He smelled it on her a couple times, vapid chemical odor coming off her skin, crushed over-the-counter stimulants snorted with a rolled wad of stolen cash like coke. Girl’s a lost cause and Matt’s not going to get sucked into her shit. He stays up, out of sight.

Tonia’s sure feet take a turn by the church and down the path to the presbytery. What would she… Footsteps stop. Hair swishes around her ears: Tonia makes sure she’s alone. Just her and Matt’s ghostly presence on a rooftop, a silent witness. She dashes to the wall and then raps on the presbytery window, two quick knocks and one thud.

The window creaks open. Shallow pants, asthmatic.

“Get inside,” Priest Albert says.

Tonia grabs his hand and heaves herself up and inside, all under two seconds. The window bangs shut.

Matt moves closer.

Muffled, but to him clear as a gunshot:

“Has anyone seen you leaving?”

“No, everybody’s sleeping,” Tonia says, blasé. She circles around aimlessly, her thong-clad feet flop-flopping on the wooden floor. “Can I have a drink?”

“Sure.” _Sure_. Cabinet door swings open, wood clacking on wood, glass chiming, liquid being poured. _Flop, flop, flop_ , Tonia’s thongs echoing in the room. Heavy, even steps, Priest Albert. Flopping stops.

“So what are we doing tonight?” Tonia asks. Liquid sloshing, gulp. Heart knocking like anxious knuckles on her ribcage.

“I was thinking we could watch a movie.” Level voice, politely inquisitive, the kind that he uses during sermon. The kind that you speak to children.

“Cool.” More flop-flop-flopping set against the bassline of heavy male feet. Groan of springs in an old armchair. Single armchair. The thongs clank on the floor, the upholstery croaks. Matt pictures Tonia curling legs under her, wedged in the narrow space between the armrest and Priest Albert’s bulk. Imagines the rough fabric on her bare feet and the heat coming off his body like a furnace.

TV crackles and flickers to life. Rapid-fire car wreck coverage, talking heads cut off mid-sentence. _Click_. Chop, chop, chop, knife on plastic. Food channel. _Click_. Woman crying to soft dramatic soundtrack. Lifetime movie. _Click_. Booming bass, shrill screech of violins. Heaving, panicked footsteps on a crunching ground. Blood-curling scream.

 _Tap_ , remote set on a nightstand. Even breaths and heartbeat like a hummingbird from Tonia. Next to her, shallow pants, pumping loud heart. Level. Shifting, rustling fabric. Faint sizzling static of the TV. The scene cuts off to a bored detective reading a coroner’s report: abrasions around the victim’s neck, multiple stab wounds to her abdomen, lacerations to her vagina; Matt stops listening. Tonia’s still, only her rabbit-fast heart betraying she’s there. Panting rises over droning voices on the TV. Priest Albert’s bass heartbeat picks up, not as quick as Tonia’s. More shifting.

Matt tilts his head. Something… something’s happening. Material whispers, armchair squeals. He can’t tell what’s happening. This far away, with the reek of New York June night lodged in his nostrils, Matt can’t rely on his smell. The only thing he has is his hearing.

Tonia gasps. It’s so soft, barely a breath, that Priest Albert may not hear it. Matt hears it. A sound, squelchy and forceful, like skin rubbing on skin, except… wetter. It stops. Priest Albert clicks his mouth around… around a finger. Squelching starts again, smoother and faster now. Pants like church bells. Nothing from Tonia but dead, dead silence and her hummingbird heart and stomach-churning wet sound.

Violent smacks, knuckles against something soft and slick. Not slick enough. It’s so loud. It’s so loud and she’s dead quiet. But her heartbeat, drowned by wet hammer-pounding. Frantic wheeze breaks into a groan, hoarse and drawn-out, that tastes like bile on the back of the teeth. Noisy pop, like a pulled out drain plug. Rabbit heartbeat eases up and settles, a clock ticking just a beat too fast.

“Do you have cigs?” Tonia asks blandly.

“ _Oh_ , God.”

“I wanna go for a smoke. Do you have a pack?”

“Yeah, it’s…” Swallow, tongue wetting chapped lips. “It’s in the pocket, in my coat.”

Bare feet hit the wood. Thongs shuffle on the floor. Flop-flop-flop, stopping. Hum of fabric. Something thick. Maybe wool.

“The other pocket.” Hum stops, resumes. Flip-flops tap their way to the window. “Don’t let anyone see you.”

“I won’t.” Colorless; her heartbeat is a placid white noise.

“And don’t take too long.”

“Just wanna have a smoke,” Tonia repeats.

“Alright.”

Window hinges whine, quick feet slap on the sill and land lightly on the ground outside.

The lighter flickers. Once, twice. Soft cursing. Third time’s a charm. Deep breath in; slow, lingering exhale. Slight weight hits the coarse presbytery wall and slides down it to the ground.

“Fuck.” A sucking breath. Heart stumbles and climbs, up, up, like a frightened bird fluttering desperately in a cage. Broken inhale; trembling blow of smoke. Ugly sound rising in her throat, swallowed down. Ash falls from shivering fingers.

Knock, knock. Priest Albert taps on the window.

Breathe. A little shaky but calming. Butt shimmies up the rough surface, jarring friction. Brush off knees. Take a last long drag.

Tonia flicks the half-smoked cigarette to the ground, grinds it under her sole, and goes back in.

 

The TV, the stupid show, is still playing. Something about blood splattered panties, something about a message from the killer. Matt listens to police chatter, grunting struggle, and doesn’t listen to anything else. Gunshots – from the TV or outside? Laughter bubbles at his lips. What’s the difference? There’s always gunshots.

Matt spurts with laugh, jams a first in his mouth, can’t stop laughing. Gurgling, ugly sound. Ribcage shrinking and expanding, throat rippling, but it’s like they don’t belong to him. Like there’s a dumb spasming body and there’s Matt, hearing what it hears, feeling what it feels, but split, the part that feels separated from the part that thinks. His brain, chopped cleanly in half, two perfect white cloves crawling with pink worms.

 _Someone’s gonna hear_ , the first thought that comes to him. Thinking is like wading in mud. His skull is flooded with ankle-high sludge. His chest is cramping from laughing. _Move it_. Matt stumbles, teeth sank in knuckles, straightens his rusty joints. He needs to get out of here. He drops to a fire escape, loses purchase, lands in the trash and on his left hip. Laugh cuts off. No air—he takes a big gulp into his lungs, and his side shoots up with fire. Matt lies on his side, on his sprouting bruises, sick-colored mushrooms. His hip is fractured. Matt rocks side to side, hisses. Not fractured; just hurts like a son of a bitch.

He rolls onto his back, kicks his feet under him, heaves upright. Someone must’ve heard the clamor. Someone is coming. Matt pulls himself up to the fire escape, the one he missed. He turns his neck and pain stabs him in the meat of his nape; he wrenched it too. He digs his fingers mercilessly in, digs for the pain. He’s wasted enough time. Matt scales the side of the building and scurries away like a battered cat.

 

Matt has seen hell – he lives in the world of fire – and _fuck_ , he’d take it over going to mass every time.

Words swirl in the church-air that’s suffocating and drowsy like chloroform, dull, repetitive, useless. He can’t fucking take it. Minutes dragging on and on, wasted. His entire weight pressing on the soles of his feet, crawling with frustration to _move_ , shake his arm, leg, do anything but just stand there like a brainless zombie.

Kindly, level voice, a little scratched with asthmatic wheeze.

“May the receiving of your Body and Blood, Lord Jesus Christ, not bring me to judgement and condemnation, but through your loving mercy be for me protection in mind and body and a healing remedy.”

Priest Albert raises the body of Christ. Glorified fucking pastry. He says:

“Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”

“Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed,” Matt murmurs along with the choir of voices, words blurring into unintelligible slur.

Organ thunders. Plentiful wails join in a hymn, something about glory of eternal life and finding peace and love in God. It sounds like a funeral march.

“May the Body of Christ keep me safe for eternal life,” Priest Albert says.

And he puts the wafer in his mouth. Smack of lips. Spit on a finger. Wet, squelchy smack—

Glass rings. Liquid being poured. Then:

“May the Blood of Christ keep me safe for eternal life.”

Gulp, swallow. Can I have a drink? _Oh_ , God.

Get a fucking grip.

“The Body of Christ.”

“Amen.”

 _God is dead_ , Matt thinks.

After, they spill outside the Church in a bee-swarm. The sun is warm on Matt’s face. UV rays burning cancer into his cells. He tilts his head up, chasing it.

Priest Albert. Matt stills. Matt hears his voice and he’s saying something, but Matt can’t process the words. Priest Albert has his meaty hand on a girl’s small-boned shoulder – Annalise, pudgy seventh grader, parents died in a DUI accident – and Matt feels her rolling back on the balls of her feet, her nervous laugh shaking her baby-sized chest.

Hummingbird heart.

Another heartbeat stutters. Tonia, frozen at the church doors like a petrified rabbit. Matt imagines striding up to her, getting in her face, growling, _look what you’ve done_. Look what you set in motion. Tonia moves first of the two of them; her heart settles into that odd half a beat too fast ticking.

“Anna!” she squeals. Annalise and Priest Albert both twitch.

Annalise got her first period a month before, and gross, chunky period blood bled through her panties into a big-ass stain on her jeans. After Matt, who’d been smelling growing stink of rust and dead cells and hearing disgusting sucking noise for hours, Tonia was the first one to notice. She made everyone call Annalise nothing but Period Pants ever since; they’re not friends.

Tonia pounces at Annalise in two long strides. Mary follows near-scraping on her heels; Tonia suddenly got over their big falling-out in January and they’re back to being inseparable.

“Anna, babe, I’ve been looking all over for you!”

“You _have_?” Annalise asks dubiously; a small note of hope sneaks into her voice. Everybody, and especially Period Pants, would want to get into Tonia’s good graces.

“Sure thing, babe!” Tonia chirps. She links her arms with Annalise’s, pulling her hip-to-hip, a step away from Priest Albert. “I was just telling Mary, you _have_ to let me borrow your pink skirt, it’s the _cutest_. Wasn’t I just saying that, Mary?”

“Totally,” Mary says gamely, quick on her feet and probably eager to see what scheme Tonia came up with this time. “The cutest.”

“O-okay,” Annalise breathes out dizzily.

“C’mon, babe, I have to try it on,” Tonia tuts.

“Right _now_?”

“Oh-em-gee, you’re such a ditzy!” Tonia says, somehow making it sound both like an insult and endearment. “Yes, dummy, now. It totally goes with my top.”

Mary giggles. Annalise joins in tentatively, wanting to be in on the joke, even if the joke is her.

“Hi, Priest Al,” Tonia shoots, like an after-thought, careless and on the verge of insulting. _How dare she, how dare she act like all’s cool, how dare she not scream danger._ “C’mon, bitches, we’re leaving.”

Matt steps into her way. Tonia stamps on his shoe with her entire weight, twists her ankle in a way that must be deliberate. Matt digs his nails into his palm.

“Beat it, spaz,” Tonia huffs, angry-cat sound. Mary giggles again, resembling one of those talking dolls with a string. It sounds like a monkey choking on its spit. Annalise blows an uncertain breathy chuckle.

Last week, it would’ve made him feel like an old chewed-out gum stuck to the bottom of Tonia’s platform flip-flops. Now, he has her hummingbird heart and choked sucking blow of a cigarette smoke etched in his brain and he feels hard, and hollow, and sick, and mean.

“I need to talk to you,” Matt mutters. It comes out low, but not dark and full of promise of threat how he means it, just inaudible and pathetic. Tonia spews her harsh, derisive laugh, a whip to his face.

“Ugh, that is so lame. Did you hear that, Anna?” Annalise perks up: grateful to be included. It smarts how Tonia won’t even talk to him. “It thinks it has a chance with me,” she whispers theatrically. Blood gushes to his face; he grips his cane like a baton. “No, Norman Bates, I don’t want to be the next hacked corpse under your bed.”

Mary howls with laughter, folding in half with an arm over her belly. Tonia drops her other hand.

“Jeez, Mary, take a chill pill. You sound like a drowning horse.”

Mary bites down on her laugh so abruptly she actually bites her tongue. Salty tang on tears pinches his nostrils. Matt thought something similar just a moment ago, but it’s, it’s _different_ , somehow, for Tonia to say it in such an offhand manner, to dish out casual cruelty to her friend for no reason at all.

“I need to talk to you,” he repeats, more urgent. Tonia scoffs.

“I told you already, weirdo, I’m not—” Matt’s hand shoots up and squeezes around Tonia’s bird-boned forearm. “ _Ow!_ Take your fucking hands off me, you fucking psycho—”

“You’ll talk to me,” Matt growls, “unless you want me talk about your _nightly activities_ in front of your friends.”

All heat drains from Tonia’s face. Her heartbeat reaches its hummingbird pace and pushes past it, going into overdrive.

“Mary, Anna, bounce,” she says coldly.

“What’s wr—” Mary starts saying.

“Are you fucking deaf?” Tonia barks at her. “Fuck off, I’ll catch you later if I wanna see your pug-face.”

No one moves. Tonia keeps facing off Matt, Matt tastes salt in the air, Mary looks to Tonia, frozen. Then Mary angles down her face, hiding behind a mountain of hair, and quietly makes herself scarce. Annalise lingers, breath bated, then she stumbles and flees. There’s just Tonia and him.

“I don’t know what you _think_ you know—” Tonia starts, low and dangerous.

“Cut the shit. I saw you.” He tightens his grip. “What the fuck are you thinking?”

Tonia tears her arm away furiously. “You _saw_ me? You’re tripping. If you think anyone will believe you…”

“Believe what?” Matt asks sardonically. “I thought I didn’t see anything.”

“‘Cos you didn’t,” Tonia says flatly. “Stay out of my shit. Got plenty your own.”

Matt shakes his head.

“I don’t understand. He’s like forty and a _priest_. It’s gross. How can you do this?”

“The fuck you care.” She sets her chin. “What, you’re gonna tell?” it’s a jeer, belittling, as if he overplayed his hand big time and he’s got nothing on her, but her traitorous heart skips and flutters.

“Yeah,” Matt says angrily, but it tastes like a lie on his tongue. He pushes it down.

Now Tonia grabs his arm. Her brittle, child’s hand is surprisingly strong, claw-like and merciless. He could twist away, easy, but not without dislocating her elbow. Tonia’s thin fingernails break skin.

“ _You won’t tell_ ,” she hisses. Her heart beats like a war drum. Matt yanks his arm; her hooked fingers, four pinpricks of pain, wring his skin tight. “You hear me? You fucking… won’t tell.”

“Why’re you so freaked if I tell? No one’s gonna believe me, right.”

“Are you retarded?” Tonia barks, short. A wave of shame-burning heat crashes over him. “You can’t tell.”

“I won’t,” Matt concedes; it tastes like defeat but truer, too. He doesn’t want to think about it. “But you should.”

Tonia lets him go and laughs; dissonant, wrong. It takes him a moment to piece why. It’s not a girl’s laugh; she sounds tired and old.

“Yeah? Like you did?”

Matt’s throat seizes up.

“What are you talking about?”

Tonia jerks her chin provocatively.

“You and that old guy?”

“Stick didn’t… he didn’t do that,” Matt says, mouth dry.

She shrugs.

“Maybe he didn’t do that.”

“It was different,” Matt says.

“Whatever.”

“I’m _not_ —”

“What? You’re not like me?” Tonia laughs again; Matt winces. “Yeah, you’re right. I don’t care what that Stick guy did or didn’t do to you. It’s… whatever. That’s your shit. And this is mine.”

“It’s not just your shit,” Matt says, accusation ringing out in his voice. “You want him to—do this to other girls?”

“Sex,” Tonia says tonelessly. “The word you’re looking for is sex.”

“No, it’s not.” Tonia averts her face. “He’s a pervert, a pedo. You think it’s just you? He’s going to touch other girls.”

“He won’t.” Dispassionate, stubborn. Matt clenches his fists, choked with rage.

“You’re an idiot,” he spits, “or a bitch. He will. You want that? You want him to touch Mary, P—Annalise? Darla? She’s five.”

“Shut up!” Tonia seethes. “I told you he won’t.”

“You don’t wanna talk about it? That it?” Matt asks. “That’s why you’re being so damn selfish? You don’t tell, and the next time he does it is your fault.”

“You don’t know _shit_ ,” Tonia chokes out, taut and shivering. “He’s not gonna touch them because he’s touching _me_! Okay? Just—drop it!”

Matt shakes his head incredulously.

“I don’t get it. Why are you doing this? For booze? Is a pack of smokes worth that? Or maybe you like it.” Hummingbird heart raps on the inside of his brain. His throat burns with puke, sick words hurled in stupid anger. Matt wants to swallow it back but it’s done, stinking all over the gap between them.

Tonia steps up to him, her vodka-sweet breath itching on his face.

“You’re a piece of shit, Matt,” she spews, her voice catching on an angry sob. “You act like you’re better than everybody but you’re a schizo and a gross fuck! Don’t tell or I’ll make the rest of your pathetic life here a living hell.”

She whirls around, a hurricane of cigarette smoke hair and fury and tears, and leaves Matt here, clenching his fists uselessly.

Most of the congregation has filtered out from the church court. A few hang back, chattering among themselves, weather, sermon, same bullshit. Priest Albert is joking with a couple, jasmine-and-sweat smelling woman and a too-warm man with a heart murmur. Nearby, their kids are clapping and signing a dumb nursery rhyme, _two little angels_ … The adults burst with laughter. Priest Albert’s belly-bass booms the loudest.

 _God is dead_ , Matt thinks. His left side, the one he fell on, is on fire. Matt punches it angrily – the bruise ripples with teeth-grinding pain.

 _Suck it up, you fucking wimp_ , Matt growls in his head and gets the fuck out of there.

 

The summer goes by like a whip of a lash and the leaves dry up and shrivel and grow over with frost like mold and die. Priest Albert moves to another parish. A couple months later four different girls accuse him of molestation, aged seven to thirteen. Matt overhears it through the Church grapevine. Priest Albert is placed on “retirement”, which means he can’t say mass but stays helping around the parish. _Imagine that_ , Sister Marianne whispers to a Sister with flushed cheeks. One of the girls slits her wrists in a school bathroom. Imagine that.

 

_One little devil, all dressed in red,_

_Tried to get to Heaven on the end of a thread._

_Thread string got broken and down he fell._

_Instead of going to Heaven, he went to…_

 

People are arguing under his window.

No, Matt reevaluates, the dorm window is two stories up and the wind is sweeping from the North-East, carrying the voices. Two blocks down. It sounds like they’re arguing right under the window. Listen, fucker, I want my money, I don’t have it, you gonna pay one way or another, yada, yada, yada. The fight’s gonna get physical any moment. Oh, here it goes— _swish_ cuts the air, crack-squish of bones on cartilage, more swearing. Matt imagines the metallic tang on his tongue. He can’t feel it, but he bets he could if he stuck his head out of the window.

He rolls onto the other side, presses the meat of his palm against his ear, for what good it does him. Whining of tendons, squish-buzz of the outer ear, oh, and the yelling and bone-snapping under the window. Matt sighs. A floor up kids are smoking pot, the sweetly-rot fumes slipping through the cracks of the leaky ceiling. Shoddy construction work. Matt feels nauseous and half high. Can you get stoned on the smell alone? The curls of smoke dancing high in the corners must be an illusion created by his overimaginative brain. This itching wakefulness is nothing like the happy lull of weed anyway.

Snorting laughter that fades into hysterical hiccups. Matt winces. That’s Mia, from Intro to Philosophy. She chews gum during lectures, cartoonish smacks and too much saliva, and spits it into her half-drunk Starbucks cups, fake fruitiness and rubber mixing with nauseating caramel-like sweetness. God, he hates her. She doesn’t live on the campus, she stinks of exertion-sweat and cum; halfway through, she slapped Asher from Room 309 away, mumbling, _God, it’s like you’re fingering a joystick_ , and that was funny. Matt doesn’t want to stay tuned for the round two.

Across the hallway: Andrea-call-me-Andy is not back yet, or won’t be back. The roommate whose name Matt doesn’t care enough to find out is watching something on her laptop. Squeaky crackling voice distorted by crappy earphones. Some stupid YouTube video. Matt tries to follow it, but it’s just words, and he keeps tuning into a bored cashier rattling off totals in the bodega Matt sometimes buys burnt, ashtray-flavored coffee at. Mia and Asher attempt stoned sex. Mia keeps saying she doesn’t feel her cunt and snort-laughing.

Matt wonders what time is it. His clock is on the nightstand. He can just about reach it if he stretches his arm, but he has to prop himself up to press it. His body feels like a bag of stones. Someone out there must be wondering the same, saying to a friend or a stranger, _shit, what time is it_ , it’s New York. Bored cashier, dudebros fighting, a girl hurling out her stomach on the curb, a group of loud, drunk teens. _Fuck, I’m feeling the munchies, do you think that gyros stand on 51 st is still open, I got a crazy craving like a preggo chick. Dunno, dude, what time is it, midnight? Bitch, are you for real, it’s like three in the morning…_ There.

Less than three hours, then, until he has to get up. If he falls asleep right now—which he won’t. He can maybe soldier on for one or two hours, tire himself enough so he catches a couple moments of sleep before his alarm rings. Wake up bleary-eyed and more exhausted than before, roll out of the bed and try to get his brain back online. If he won’t sleep through the alarm. It’s been happening more and more. His brain is on right now; he can probably make it through the day, just a little more pissed, a little more impatient. It’s good enough.

Andrea-call-me-Andy’s roommate slams the laptop shut. Mia’s banging on the wall, yowling like a slaughtered pig. A woman trips and smashes her face on the subway steps. No point wasting more time waiting for sleep that won’t come.

 

Fogwell’s is a long way, and Matt hasn’t set his foot there since his dad was alive. His gym is a sleek, modern thing, no dried blood and the sweat sweeter and fresher, nose-tingling whiff of newness. Well, “his gym” – Matt stole the keycard off the cleaning lady, stood still in the door until he mapped the layout of the cameras and figured out all the blind spots. It probably would be easier to sneak into an old school boxing club, place with less security but—this way is more fun. Or something.

Matt stares dumbly at nothing. He forgot the tapes. He sighs. Swallows something hysterical and useless clawing up his throat. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. He can do without tapes.

He swings at the bag. Not much force. Knuckles flare up. He wrings his hand, kneads the bone. It’s ok. Hits the bag harder, swish-gnash-groan. Line of fire, pulsating along the impact. It’s fine, it’s good. Helps with focus.

Blow, blow, blow. Stinging-hot pain, a millisecond delay, like a lagging radio transmission. He gets in the zone, swing, pain, exhale, it’s good, it’s grounding, there’s just his body and the bag. Restless, hissing creature scratching under his skin. Skin breaks, blood splashes on leather and at the back of his tongue. No good, he’ll have to wipe it after. The creature peeks its tongue through the edges of his split skin. Fists burning, lungs contracting, skin itching. He’s a bag of skin with stones in his hands and the creature sitting where his heart and stomach and a human set of lungs should be. The creature is moving and breathing for him. It hits too hard too fast. Something crunches wetly and his hand roars like ripped in half.

Matt bites on the inside of his cheek, swallows the salty-rust blob. He touches the knuckles of his bad hand gingerly – stab-pain shoots up to his wrist. He bites again, digs his thumb in. Pushes past the phantom burning rod, feels for fracture. Second knuckle, hairline-thin, like reverse spider-web. Lucky. He thinks he can keep going. Punches the bag purposely with all his strength, grinds his teeth so hard his ears ring. The fracture line shrieks, but it’s ok, he can take it. He hits the bag again. The bones rattle, and it’s more concerning, he can fuck up his knuckle for real. Rearrange something irreparably. It’s stupid, he needs his motor skills, it’s stupid to fuck up his hand like this. The creature howls, unappeased. Matt lets out a long exhale.

He’ll take the long way back. Maybe the miserable wet night air will settle it for a while.

 

Andrea-call-me-Andy is crying.

Wailing, shuddering chokes of air, snot moving up and down her throat crying. Matt’s head hurts. He counts the minutes until Andrea-Andy swallows back her sobs, smears her mucus on her sleeve and knocks on the door. Wonders what is it this time. It’s all the same. Andrea-Andy howls, wipes her face furiously on rough fabric, towel, maybe. Matt imagines her tear-blotched face rubbed raw to the bone. Wonders where the roommate is. Click of a door, thwomp, thwomp, thwomp, those chunky heeled boots that all girls seem to wear now sinking in the carpet. Shaky inhale. A knock.

Matt lies stock still in the bed and thinks about staying like that, listening to the knocks taper off. He imagines bumping into her tomorrow, _oh, yeah, I was out last night, sorry_ , and Andrea-Andy-in-his-head frowns, squeezes through a thick throat, _oh, sure_ , like Matt ever goes out, like it’s a believable story, and it’s so thin and cringy even in his head, and coming up with a half-decent excuse is exhausting. Getting up is exhausting.

“Matt?” she whispers, and Matt sighs, pushes himself up. What is wrong with you, be a friend, be a fucking human being. The creature digs its claws into the meat of his chest, tries to pull him down. _Whiny bitch_ , Matt thinks without heat, throws it to the creature like a bone. It sinks its fangs into the petty insult, chews on it, pet monster munching on a treat. Matt lingers, makes sure the creature’s satisfied— _pathetic, annoying, bore_ —and goes to answer the door.

 

He takes Andrea-Andy to McDonald’s, the closest place open at this hour, like he did that first time he found her sobbing in the bathroom at a party, her breath stinking of cheap beer, when the only instinct in him was to keep her safe, so he offered her food and listened. Good Samaritan. The fast food stench is like a metal kebab cart in 90 degrees heat over dead rats rotting in the sewer. It’s ok, Matt smells it four blocks away and inside is warm.

Andrea-Andy spits rapid-fire words in between McNuggets and melted vanilla-like ice cream. Matt entertains himself by distinguishing as many different people’s hair in her food as he can. He counts five. Andrea-Andy’s talking—her vocal chords thrum, lips smack around different sounds, his ears are picking up the vibrations in the air. He can’t make out words. He thinks he shouldn’t call her Andrea-Andy in his head. He thinks he should be listening. He can guess what she’s saying – Nikki, again, calling drunk at five in the morning, _she said she was gonna overdose, I don’t know what to do_ , parents, dropping in just to tell her how much they disapprove of her life choices, _I want to howl when I see that sneer on my mother’s face, the bitch won’t even fucking tell me out right what’s wrong, like she doesn’t think I’m worth bothering_ , maybe school, _I feel like a failure, I can’t flunk another semester, I think I’m too stupid for college, but I can’t do anything else, and I don’t know what I can do with my life if I’m expelled_ …

At first Matt tried to calm her down, to help. _Don’t pick up the phone, Nikki’s not your responsibility anymore, she broke your heart a long time ago and you need to let yourself heal. They’re your parents and I know it’s terrible, sometimes people who love you suck, and it’s hard, but you can’t wait around for their approval. You’re not stupid, it’s normal to struggle with school, you have a lot on your plate, I can help you with studying if you want._ He stopped with time. He sits through her whining, hums at the right times. She revels in her issues and he’s just a rubber duck to her.

 _Broken, useless, trash_ , the creature sings. Matt’s too tired to shut it up. It’s right anyway. Something’s wrong with him, what kind of person listens to their friend’s heart breaking and only feels hollow and tired.

Andrea-Andy quiets for a moment, chews slowly on a McNugget. Tang of nervous sweat.

“You want some?” she asks, and it’s not what she means to say.

Matt realizes he’s hungry. He tries to remember when he’s eaten last—bagel from a stand, tasting of urine from the clerk’s unwashed hands. Two dollars fifty, so Matt ate it all. That was this morning. What, almost twenty hours ago?

He thinks about lifting his hand and reaching out and taking a piece of McNugget that tastes of dead animal, and putting it into his mouth, and chewing, and swallowing.

“Thanks,” he says. “I’m not hungry.”

The pit of his stomach sucks, acid juices eating at his esophagus. The creature chews at the walls of his body, scraping in ulcers with its razor teeth. Fasting is supposed to be good for your soul. Mind sharpens, divorced from the profane. The feeling of hunger is just stimuli, information sent to his brain, neither good or bad. Mind controls the body.

His control is slipping. Matt can’t even will himself to raise his hand.

“And how are you, Matt?” Andrea-Andy asks, and means it, because she’s a better person than him.

Matt imagines opening his mouth and saying, _I broke my knuckle yesterday. I can’t sleep. I think my feelings are broken and I don’t know if it’s something to fix._

His throat is thick and useless. She doesn’t care about his broken knuckle. And what can she say to that? _Put it on ice_ , idiot, you know it your damn self unsaid, irrelevant and redundant. _That sucks, have you tried sleeping meds?_ No, I don’t know why, there’s this itching under my skin and it won’t let me rest. Too much, too personal, awkward and almost pornographic. He doesn’t want her to know that about him. _That’s cruel, you don’t even give a shit about me, do you?_ Fair, deserved. Matt doesn’t want to hear her say it.

Waste of words.

“I’m fine,” he says. “Same old.”

“Right.”

The silence stretches on, uncomfortable and pressing. Matt squeezes his broken hand. What do people talk about? He tries to dredge it from the murky cesspit that is his brain. He used to know this. He knows it. The last movie they watched, what they did last weekend, school load. Matt doesn’t watch movies, doesn’t have any friends, can’t remember whatever they’re learning right now and couldn’t care less. He thinks he didn’t use to be like this. He used to be a person.

“Do you mind if I went for a smoke?” Andrea-Andy pipes up and Matt leaps at it, pathetically grateful.

“No, not at all,” he says. “I’ll go with you.”

It’s freezing outside, Matt doesn’t smoke. He goes after her anyway, huddles in his woefully inadequate parka next to Andrea-Andy as she clicks the lighter and takes a deep, relieved inhale. Nicotine sharper now, but it’s always there, sunk deep into her skin and hair roots. Her high-heeled boots stamp on the poured concrete. Rap, rap, rap. Nuisance. Bore. Matt doesn’t even like her. She’s just a habit. She reminds him of Tonia. God, he hasn’t thought of her in years. Where did that thought come from? Andrea-Andy shivers in her too-skimpy skirt, blows a tremulous breath of smoke. She could be Tonia, so babyish and so old, lighting cigarette after cigarette from the crinkled pack from Priest Albert’s pocket. Tonia, fourteen and high out of her mind on a cocktail of Ecstasy and rat poison and coke, hauled off to juvie in condemnatory silence. Matt doesn’t remember her last name. Doesn’t remember what “Tonia” stands for. He wonders if she’s dead and if he could ever find out if she was.

Hummingbird heart and stock still, like Matt has been, like Matt is. He hasn’t thought about Tonia in years. His mind feels thick and muddy. He doesn’t try to chase this half-a-memory. It’s like a bad radio transmission, alien and buzzing with interference. Matt listens to Andrea-Andy’s heart, ticking like an impatient clock, focuses on the inhale-exhale rhythm. Cigarette smoke hangs in the air like a solid mass. Matt inhales. The roof of his mouth tastes like an ashtray. He imagines the walls of his respiratory track blackening with smoke like an inside of a chimney, sticky dark sludge oozing to the bottom of his lungs. He takes a deep breath.

Andrea-Andy whirls at him, grips his arm.

“Promise me we won’t fall out of touch, Matt,” she blurts. “I don’t want us to be those people who finish school and stop speaking. When you get into Law school and I’m still repeating third year, promise me you won’t forget about me.”

“I won’t,” Matt says. He wonders when lying became his first instinctual response. He thinks about the world of fire pressing at the back of his clenched teeth, and his dad’s gaping, empty silence shaped like the ghost of his mother, and he thinks that maybe wickedness is something he was born with cursing through his blood.

 

Matt comes back to his room, his unmade bed that smells like sweat and restlessness, his scattered books that sound like Sister Constance’s pregnant silences. Matt has classes in a couple hours. He won’t get any sleep. He should make use of the time, do some reading. The ugly part of him says: you don’t need this, it’s stupid, boring, stuff you could bullshit through in your sleep. Waste of time. You’re too smart for this. The creature whines needily.

It’s true, and it’s an excuse. Pride, sloth. The creature bares its teeth and growls. He would’ve called it the devil, once. Stupid superstition he’s drunk with his mother’s milk. He wonders if his mother stuck around long enough to breastfeed him. Babies who never had breast milk don’t grow right, he’s read somewhere. There’s something lacking. Maybe it’s that hollow space inside him, sliver-cracks in his undernourished bones, is where this black, ugly thing slipped in. Filled the void in his ribs, steeled his spinal cord, grown in his body like bad nail, until Matt couldn’t tell where the creature ends and he begins. Maybe the devil inside is him.

The city howls outside, like a hungry dog, and the creature answers, clawing at the bars of his ribcage desperately. Matt squeezes his crushed knuckle. The creature quietens. Someday the lousy scraps Matt throws it won’t be enough. It’s outgrown its ribbed cage, fattened with nights pounding at the bag and mean, awful thoughts, and the city assaults his body, demanding he let it out.

Something has to give.

 

_Don't get excited, don't turn red._

_Instead of going to Heaven, he went to…_

 

Shuffling, short breath, rapid movements. Angry.

“Did you say something to someone?”

“No.” Tremulous, stubborn. Hummingbird heart.

“Then why did the Child Services show up at our door?” Abrupt swish, bony fingers squeezing tender flesh painfully. “Have you been spouting this disgusting tales to people?”

“I didn’t say anything.” Voice thin, breaking. Sniffle. She’s crying again.

That’s on him. He did that.

“Don’t lie,” a bark. “How could you make up such a horrible thing?”

“I didn’t,” weak, pleading. “I didn’t say anything, Mommy.”

“God hates little girls who are dirty liars. He’s looking down on you thundering. Why would you do something like this to me? To our family? There’s no worse sin than breaking your parent’s heart.”

Choked sob.

“I’m sorry.”

“Apologize to your father. I can’t look at you right now. I don’t know where this wickedness comes from. We didn’t raise you like that.”

Footsteps slapping on a tile floor, fainter and fainter. Just two heartbeats now. Hummingbird heart and deafening gong.

“I didn’t say anything,” the girl says quietly. Hummingbird heart beats faster in her thin little chest.

Slow steps, booming and deliberate. Spitting hiss.

“You’re gonna wish you didn’t.”

“Matt?”

Matt blinks. Foggy’s heartbeat, steady and familiar like a favorite song you listened to too many times, comes into focus. A wave of heat, uptick from his regular body temperature. He’s concerned.

Matt opens his mouth, meaning to say something reassuring. One block down, a little girl is crying.

“Do you think that sometimes the law is not enough?”

He doesn’t know how Foggy is looking at him right now, but he has a good guess. “Uh… you mean, in theory?”

Matt licks his lips. “Yes—yes, in theory.”

Foggy relaxes his weight against the kitchen counter, thumbs at the neck of his beer.

“Well, yeah, obviously. Law’s not… some higher ideal, it’s created and interpreted by people. By its very nature it’s imperfect.”

“But do you think…” Matt hesitates. “Do you think that when the law fails, sometimes we need… we need to take extralegal measures, to set it right?”

Foggy’s a beat too-fast heart is very loud in his ears.

“Matt, where’s this coming from?”

“It’s—nowhere, just…” Matt blows out a shaky exhale, waves his hand vaguely.

“I do think that sometimes it’s up to us to pick up where the law leaves off, yeah,” Foggy allows. Matt lets out a breath, starts to say, _Exactly_. “Extralegal’s not the same as illegal, though.”

Matt closes his mouth.

“Right.”

“Is that not what you wanted to hear?” Foggy asks, his voice brimming and cautious.

“No, I-ah. I agree.” Matt nods decisively. “The law is far from perfect, but we shouldn’t take it upon ourselves to decide when it’s convenient to follow it,” he says and almost means it.

This is the moment where Foggy asks, _Is something going on with you?_ Except, of course, he won’t ask. Foggy will try to cheer him up or take his mind off things if he thinks something’s up but he won’t ask. Matt is—grateful ( _relieved_ ); he doesn’t deserve a friend like this.

“Well, good to have this out of the way, since we’re supposed to be, you know, _lawyers_ ,” Foggy quips, right on cue.

“Come on, Foggy, you know that lawyers are just people who know how to commit a crime without actually breaking the law,” Matt shoots back, grinning.

“Not us,” Foggy says good-naturedly. “Not since you roped me into leaving a real job to start up Sisters of Mercy’s sanctuary for the downtrodden victims of the system,” he says and Matt laughs, says, “ _Roped_ you in?” and it’s good, it’s so simple and nice, and Matt wants nothing more from life.

The girl is still crying.

 

Church bells.

There’s one Catholic church in the walking distance from his apartment. There was one Catholic church in the walking distance from home, his first and only home, in Hell’s Kitchen. Matt follows the sound, follows the footsteps trode in the pavement by short, bouncy steps, and the ghost of a child’s excited chatter. He feels his dad looking at him, stronger than ever.

For a split-second, Matt thinks if he’ll be struck down the moment he crosses the church’s threshold. Nothing happens, of course—he’s not the only devil who walks this place.

He makes the sign of the cross and takes a knee, limbs clumsy and stiff like a doll’s left unused for too long in the attic. The church is almost empty, just a priest and an old lady kneeling in the nave. Matt holds his breath, waiting for someone to walk up to him, tell him he’s trespassing, that he needs to leave. But that’s ridiculous. Church is for people. Matt has every right to be here.

He takes a seat in the back, thinks maybe he should kneel. But it feels wrong somehow, so he stays in the seat.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing here.

He thinks he maybe—what, expected some sort of divine wisdom to descend upon him, make him reborn, eyes open and certain in his purpose.

A cough echoes in the empty silence. The air smells like incense and his childhood. It’s just a church.

Maybe he should pray. He doesn’t know how. How do you pray to a God you’re not sure is listening?

Matt searches in himself and the prayers are there, formal and something to lean on when you’re grasping for words.

O Father who art in Heaven… Anachronic, stilted, perfunctory. Maybe—Hail Mary, full of grace… it’s always been with him through the nights of violence and terror.

He chases the thought away. Matt doesn’t remember any more prayers. He searches for saints, hours spent studying hagiography, bent over books like a 15th century monk. Saint Jude, the most popular patron saint of desperate cases. Saint Philomena’s always been his favorite, though. Just thirteen, bestially tortured, and unyielding in her beliefs.

But it feels wrong, to pray to her. She should be a shining ideal, but instead—she’s scornful, putting him to shame. Matt, with his weak and wicked heart, how can he stand in front of her and ask her for understanding?

It’s not that Matt doesn’t have the strength to resist temptation. It’s that he’s not sure he wants to resist it.

He can’t pray for help to a God he turned away from all these years. He has no right to haunt this holy place.

 _When in fear, God is dear_ , his grandmother’s voice echoes in his head. Matt hates to be a cliché.

He goes to leave. By the church doors, there’s a rack with votive candles, their burning knots sending smoke and prayers to the sky.

Matt pays for a candle. The row of flames flickers before him, tiny sparks of heat. It’s difficult to pinpoint them. Matt feels with his fingers to gauge them. The wave of warmth sways. Sizzle and pinprick of pain.

“Shit.” Matt retracts his fingers. Makes the sign of the cross. It’s probably a sin to curse in the church. He can almost feel the ghost of his grandmother panting disapprovingly over his shoulder. He dips his candle until he feels it catch fire, a swishing start of a new line of heat. Matt places it carefully on the rack. Stands there for a moment, feeling the warmth ripple on his skin. He supposes he should say a prayer for intention. Maybe for a soul. Dad’s face, the last thing he saw before the chemical ate on his eyes, flashes before him. Matt dredges out the foggy words from the edges of his memory.

Eternal rest grant to him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.

Barely nine and standing over his dad’s grave, clutching the frayed words like a hand of a distant relative. Whispers, whispers, whatever will happen to the poor child now, Sister Josephine herding him away, _children shouldn’t witness such things_. Saying intently the prayer in his head, but still hearing the whispers. Wondering what was written on his dad’s grave. He wanted to ask but couldn’t voice the words. Wondering if he tries hard enough, can he list all the flowers laid in the sprays, can discern underneath their sweetly stench and five-feet dirt the smell of his dad’s corpse rotting.

Matt puts his hand in the fire.

The sting of pain lags a beat too late. Matt hisses, jerks his hand away. What the hell. Burnt skin whines, pulled taut and tender. Matt puts his finger in his mouth, sucks on it. It doesn’t even hurt that much. It’s just—there, immediate. Nerve endings flicked alive. He’s centered. He’s calm.

 _Devil, devil, devil_ , voices whisper. He knows what this is, knows that it’s probably so much worse to do it in church. Your body is God’s gift, Sister Helen’s voice, Priest James’s voice. It is not yours to do with it as you please. Is it the devil’s pull to the fire? God, that’s almost biblical.

He used to feel the devil like a physical weight in his chest. But maybe he’s been thinking about this all wrong. Maybe devil is not a rotten creature living inside you, maybe devil is that drink you have to take your mind off your problems, maybe it’s that ten-dollar bill you don’t give to a homeless person because it’s too cold to stop and dig through your wallet. Maybe devil is listening to a little girl’s cries and turning a deaf ear.

No, that’s not right either. Justifications, he’s still falling on justifications. Writing in an ideology to validate his own wants.

But—take away absolutist morals, take away this dark, rabid creature in him hungry for blood. What remains is that little girl, irrefutable and unthinkable to talk away. Not Tonia, but like Tonia. God. He listened to a little girl before and he buried it down. He’s not letting a little girl cut herself into pieces again.

He’s been quoting Thurgood Marshall at Foggy. Does the same principle not apply here? There’s another quote tugging at him: never see a need without doing something about it. It was Sister Marianne’s favorite saying. He thinks it’s Saint Mary MacKillop who said it first, though from the way Sister Marianne told it, you wouldn’t know. He used to repeat it after her, not really thinking about the words.

The devil, the violence – that’s secondary. The ends don’t sanctify the means, but maybe this is a necessary evil. Or maybe he’s falling on sophisms again. Matt doesn’t care. He doesn’t care for his soul anymore. There’s a need and something must be done.

And oh, by God, he will _enjoy_ doing it.

 

Matt stalks his prey to the old tracks, staying high in the metal branches and brick crowns of the city. He staked the quarry’s place of work, hours stock still in the dirty alley across the street, but it turns out he didn’t have to; the stench of booze hangs after him in the air leading Matt straight to him like a neon red trail spray-painted in the woods. More useful, to him. He leaps metal crate to metal crate, the screech-boom like a gunshot to his ears, but the man is too plastered to take notice. Matt could stand in front of him and shoot him point blank and he’d be dead before he realized. Not that he’s going to do that.

He wants to drag this out.

He stills, not hesitant but reflective. The devil thrums beneath his skin, itching to stretch its limbs. The moment he lets it loose, he can never shove it back in. It’s too big, _he_ is too big to hide in his meek skinsuit anymore, it’s always fit him wrong, tearing red at his knuckles. Matt tries to box himself, wedge his hulking body into narrow spaces, 8-5 job, one-bedroom apartment, little dive haunt, this life he desperately wants for himself and which he still navigates like an unprepared understudy pushed to the stage he never expected to find himself on. But the devil lurks, low in the pit of his stomach, ready to leap. Ready to pounce, not if, but when.

Matt closes his eyes behind the blindfold, allows himself a moment of grief. It’s been a good life. A small life, and half not real, wishful thought he let himself run with too long, but a good life. Maybe in a kinder world, Matt could help people with his wits not his fists, run a little local practice, make a difference to a handful of down-on-luck strangers, and it would be enough. Meet a girl, marry her in his childhood church, make a family of his own and love it with all he’s got, and never feel the night calling. It would be a good life.

He opens his eyes. This is not a kinder world. It’s the only world that he has. Matt only has his fists, and a broken heart, and violence pumping through his bloodstream. He grinds his knuckles, tunes into his prey’s body, tangling legs, drunk mumbling, feet scraping on gravel. Wakes something in him, some bone-deep instinct he tried to exorcise that now he greets like an old friend. Crunch of bone, squash of eye-socket, howl of mangled genitals, justly vindicating – it all sounds appealing in his mind. But he knows, knows in his soul where the wickedness lives, that it’s not a place for cool thought. He wants to set loose, red-tinged pounding fury, carve in justice of his own the only way he knows how. Matt exhales, casting out an excess of thoughts and scraps of humanity. Leaves only stone calm and burning red violence. His body leads, descends on the prey like a black bird of vengeance. Matt’s world narrows to movements. Raise your fists. Snarl a breath.

Let the devil out.

 

 

 

_…BED!_

**Author's Note:**

>  _Dark Places_ is absolutely miserable. It’s the best book I’ve ever read.
> 
> Comments make me forget I’m dead inside<3


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